The father of policing in Britain, and therefore of policing in Britain’s colonies, was Sir Robert Peel. When he was Home Secretary – he subsequently became Prime Minister – he founded the first modern police force in 1829. For a long time policemen were called Peelers and to this day they are called Bobbies in memory of Sir Robert. Their introduction was controversial – cries of “tyranny’s accomplices” quickly found their way into the popular prints. Gradually, however, the police found general acceptance no doubt because their contribution to public peace greatly outweighed any heavy-handedness they might be responsible for.
In the light of the current lambasting of the Guyana Police Force and the daily calls on the police to improve their service to all of us, it may serve some purpose to set out the philosophy on which the London Metropolitan Police Force was founded. This became known as Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing. Here are the Nine Principles which one likes to think still have relevance:
1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognize always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognize always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognize always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the state, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
It would be interesting to know if the Police Force of Ferguson, Missouri, or any number of other police authorities all across the United States, particularly in the South, are aware of Peel’s principles.
It would also be interesting to know whether the principles are inscribed in letters of gold at Eve Leary and indeed at all police stations across our own crime-embarrassed land.
