No, that statement certainly doesn’t apply to the author. If you do a search for the phrase “Father of Modern Policing” you’ll likely get back a ton of links referring to Sir Robert Peel, the man who is credited with starting the London Metropolitan Police Force back in 1829. It’s interesting, if you study the policing principles he and his team developed at that time, you’ll find that they still apply - or should - even in today’s world, almost 200 years later. Let’s go through the three core principles and in part two of this article we’ll take a look at his expanded list of nine. (Spoiler alert: The first three are repeats so we’ll be taking a closer look at the remaining six in part two.)
Core Principle #1: The goal of a law enforcement agency is to prevent crime, not catch criminals.
If crime can be prevented, then no energy or resources need to be spent on investigations, catching criminals and prosecuting them. Ideally, all crime would be prevented rather than punished. The corollary of that statement is that a good police officer, and therefore a good police agency, wouldn’t have good arrest statistics but would instead of a beat/jurisdiction with a low crime rate. Peel submitted the thought that arresting citizens for committing a crime suppressed their rights and punished them and that such treatment could have a negative impact on how other citizens perceived the police.
Cute Principle #2: The key to preventing crime is earning public support.
Peel believed that every member of a given community should share in the responsibility of preventing crime. He compared them to being volunteer members of the force. He further stated the belief that citizens would only be willing to act as such if they trusted in and supported the police force. When you consider this outlook it makes perfect sense and most agencies today ask for assistance with crime prevention from their community anyway. Don’t think so? Consider how many social media posts you see, especially in holiday seasons, about locking your car, securing your belongings, etc. How many agencies have crime prevention sections who work with community groups to educate the public on making their homes harder targets? We work with the communities we serve on a regular basis and if we’re successful in our efforts, our community actively assists us in preventing crime. That’s exactly the public support Peel was talking about.
Core Principle #3: The police earn public support by respecting community principles.
This is where some of our challenge in contemporary times has come in. All too often, especially in higher crime areas, the police have to focus on enforcement rather than prevention. Reality is that we never really know how many crimes we prevent just by our timely presence, but we all know that crime still exists, even in the best of neighborhoods. In the areas where higher crime rates exist, police face greater challenges in prevention and enforcement efforts. Sometimes the community itself might resent the officers for doing their job because the result is that some member of the community is arrested. In today’s world of legacy media hyper-sensationalizing any police wrong-doing, real or perceived, the community can lose respect for the agency and actively work against all officers. It behooves all officers, their chain of command and agency executives to be alert to potential for such community conflict and work aggressively to prevent such.
Comment: It would be interesting to have Sir Robert Peel work in law enforcement in the modern world. Can you imagine how amazed he’d be at the technology we have available? Can you imagine how shocked he’d be at the constant microscopic examination of police actions and policies? His reactions to such tools as TASERs, projected simulations for training, friction-lock batons and more. It would be interesting to get his perspective on such concepts as Community Oriented Policing and School Resource Officers. The idea of a Citizens Police Academy… what would he think?
Stay tuned for part two coming soon.
