Police

• 1. Introduction

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  Police Magistrate John Fielding, head of the Bow Street Runners, argued in the 18th century that it is much better to prevent even one man from being a rogue than apprehending and bringing forty to justice. That single idea sits at the heart of what the police have become. The police are a constituted body of people empowered by a state to enforce the law and protect public order. Their lawful powers stretch to arrest and the use of force, legitimized by the state's monopoly on violence. But that bare definition hides a long and strange history. Why did a word that once meant simply public policy and good administration come to mean officers in uniform? How did societies from ancient China to Babylon to medieval Spain keep order before the modern force existed? And why does an institution meant to protect the public so often find itself accused of corruption, brutality, and serving the powerful? The answers reach back thousands of years and across nearly every continent.

• 2. A Word For The City

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  The word police first appeared in English in the early 15th century, carrying senses like public policy, state, and public order. It came from the Middle French police, meaning public order, administration, and government. That in turn came from the Latin politia, a romanization of the Ancient Greek politeia, meaning citizenship, administration, and civil polity. The root beneath all of it is the Greek polis, meaning city. So the very name binds policing to the life of the city itself. The earliest English use seems to have been the term Polles, mentioned in a book called The Second Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England, published in 1642. Ireland still differs from other English-speaking countries, using the Irish terms Garda and Gardaí for both its national force and its members. Numerous slang terms for police also exist, many of them decades or centuries old with lost etymologies. One of the oldest, cop, has largely shed its slang feel and become a plain colloquial word, used by the public and officers alike to name the profession itself.

• 3. Theories Of Prevention

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  Michel Foucault wrote that the modern idea of police as a paid functionary of the state was developed by German and French scholars in public administration and statistics during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The most notable early work was Nicolas Delamare's Traité de la Police, first published in 1705. In the German lands, a Science of Police called Polizeiwissenschaft was first theorized by Philipp von Hörnigk, a 17th-century Austrian political economist, and more famously by Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi. As conceived by this science, the police had administrative, economic, and social duties, including public health, urban planning under the miasma theory of disease, and the surveillance of prices. The concept of preventive policing, deterring crime before it happens, gained influence in the late 18th century. The Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham promoted the views of the Italian Marquis Cesare Beccaria, holding that it is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. Patrick Colquhoun's influential A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis appeared in 1797, heavily shaped by Bentham's thought. Edwin Chadwick's 1829 article, Preventive Police, argued that prevention ought to be a police force's primary concern. He believed a preventive police would deter crime by making it cost-ineffective, the idea that crime doesn't pay. In the second draft of his 1829 Police Act, Robert Peel changed the object of the new Metropolitan Police to its principal object, the prevention of crime. Later historians credited England's appearance of orderliness to that preventive principle entrenched in Peel's system.

• 4. Order Before The Badge

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  Law enforcement in ancient China was carried out by prefects for thousands of years, developing in the Chu and Jin kingdoms of the Spring and Autumn period. In Jin, dozens of prefects were spread across the state, appointed by local magistrates and overseeing the civil administration of their prefecture. Under each prefect were subprefects, and prefects could also be women. The system later spread to Korea and Japan. In Babylonia, law enforcement was eventually delegated to officers known as paqūdus, present in both cities and rural settlements, who investigated petty crimes and carried out arrests. In ancient Egypt, evidence of an office called Judge Commandant of the Police dates to the fourth dynasty. Warriors armed with wooden sticks guarded markets, temples, and parks, and were known to use trained monkeys, baboons, and dogs to catch criminals. By the Eighteenth Dynasty, an elite desert-ranger force called the Medjay protected royal cemeteries and the borders of Egypt. In ancient Greece, publicly owned slaves served magistrates as police. Athens used the Scythian Archers, about 300 slaves, to keep order at public meetings and make arrests. Sparta even kept a secret police force, the crypteia, to watch its large population of helots. In the Roman Empire, the army provided much of the security, with the Praetorian Guard able to act as a riot force. Under Augustus, fourteen wards were protected by seven squads of 1,000 men called vigiles, who served as night watchmen and firemen in a capital approaching one million people.

• 5. The First Modern Forces

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  The High Constables of Edinburgh, formed in 1611, were probably the first statutory police force in the world. Half merchants and half craftsmen, they enforced 16 regulations covering curfews, weapons, and theft in a city then part of the Kingdom of Scotland. The first centrally organized and uniformed force came from the government of King Louis XIV in 1667, created to police Paris, then the largest city in Europe. A royal edict registered by the Parlement of Paris on the 15th of March 1667 created the office of lieutenant général de police. Its task was defined as ensuring the peace and quiet of the public, purging the city of disturbances, procuring abundance, and having everyone live according to their station. The office was first held by Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, who commanded 44 commissaires de police. By 1709 these commissioners were assisted by inspecteurs de police, with the city divided into 16 districts. A royal edict of October 1699 extended the scheme to the rest of France. The English path ran differently. Since the time of Alfred the Great, communities used a mutual pledge system of tithings, groups of ten families, each responsible for the good behavior of its members. Ten tithings made a hundred, overseen by a reeve, and the hundreds sat within shires overseen by a shire-reeve, the word from which sheriff evolved. By the end of the 13th century the office of constable had developed, and constables eventually became the first police officials supported by taxes.

• 6. Who Wears The Uniform

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  Police who wear uniforms make up the majority of a police service's personnel, and their main duty is to respond to calls for service. When not answering calls they work to prevent crime, such as through patrols. They are known by varying names, including preventive police, the uniform branch, order police, or patrol, and in Australia and the United Kingdom as general duties officers. Atypically, Brazil's preventive police are called the Military Police. Police detectives, by contrast, handle investigations and typically make up roughly 15 to 25 percent of a service's personnel. They usually wear business attire rather than uniforms, and plainclothes officers dress like the general public to blend in. In some cases officers work undercover, concealing their identity to investigate organized crime or narcotics. The relationship between the two branches varies by country. In the New York Police Department and Philadelphia Police Department, a regular detective holds a higher rank than a regular officer. In British and Canadian police, a detective has equal status, the move treated as a specialization rather than a promotion. Beyond these, many forces include part-time or volunteer officers known as reserves, auxiliary police, or special constables. In the United States, the Volunteers in Police Service program assists over 200,000 volunteers in almost 2,000 programs. Specialized groups handle particular crimes or skills, from traffic enforcement and homicide to underwater search, aviation, and bomb disposal. Larger jurisdictions employ police tactical units for violent standoffs, counterterrorism, and rescue, while the Specialist Firearms Command of London's Metropolitan Police handles hostage takings and armed robbery.

• 7. Many Forces, Many Flags

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  Austria, Chile, Israel, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, and Sweden each have a single national police force. France instead pairs a civilian Police Nationale with a paramilitary National Gendarmerie, the civilian force policing urban areas and the paramilitary one policing the countryside. This French model spread through the Napoleonic Wars and the French colonial empire. Spain mirrors it with the Policía Nacional and the Guardia Civil, and Italy with the Polizia di Stato and Carabinieri. Federations often run two or more tiers of force. In Australia and Germany, most policing is carried out by state forces supplemented by a federal one. In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police serve as the federal police, while rural areas often contract their policing to the RCMP, or to provincial police in Ontario and Quebec. The United States runs a highly decentralized system with over 17,000 state and local law enforcement agencies, from local police and sheriff's offices to federal bodies. Federal agencies like the FBI hold jurisdiction only over federal crimes or those crossing state lines. Most countries belong to the International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol, which serves as a central point for information on crime and suspects but conducts no investigations or arrests itself, and excludes political crimes. The 19th century saw cross-border policing too. Prussian police occasionally surveilled Karl Marx during his years in London. According to the Global Accountability Report for 2007, Interpol scored lowest in its category, coming tenth with a score of 22 percent on overall accountability.

• 8. Force And Its Limits

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  South African police operate a shoot-to-kill policy, allowing deadly force against any person who poses a significant threat, with President Jacob Zuma stating that the country needs to handle crime differently given its high rate of violent crime. Elsewhere the rules run tighter. In the United Kingdom outside Northern Ireland, and in Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and Malta, ordinary officers do not carry firearms as a matter of course. New Zealand and Norwegian police keep firearms in their vehicles and must obtain authorization before removing them, unless life is in danger. When force is needed, officers may turn to less-lethal weapons like batons, tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, and electroshock weapons. In 1980, the British Army's Special Air Service was deployed to resolve the Iranian Embassy siege on behalf of the Metropolitan Police. Legal limits shape this power. In the United States, Miranda v. Arizona led to the widespread use of Miranda warnings, and police generally cannot hold suspects more than 24 to 48 hours before arraignment. In Terry v. Ohio in 1968, the court limited an investigatory stop's search to weapons only. British officers, governed by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, generally hold greater powers, and every UK officer, whatever the rank, is legally a constable. Accountability bodies have grown alongside this. The Police Service of Northern Ireland is investigated by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, set up after the Patten report. In May 2020, a movement to scrutinize police violence grew in Minneapolis, Minnesota with the murder of George Floyd, bringing calls to defund and even abolish the police, and renewed argument over systemic racism in policing.