POLICING PRINCIPALS
There are two Policing Principles that are the basis of what modern-day society believes its law enforcement should adhere to daily. Those two Principals are Peel’s Nine Principals and United Nations, Human Rights Office, Law Enforcement Code of Conduct.
Peel’s Nine Principles
Around 1611, Shakespeare wrote what would become one of the most famous quotes in history, in his play The Tempest, that history through time seems to all happened before: “Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come.”
The quote is engraved on the front exterior over the columns of the National Archives building in Washington, D.C.
In today’s anti-law Enforcement environment, critics cite that Law Enforcement has become an “occupying force” who are “insensitive” to the community they serve. This attitude is not new. It has been an ongoing complaint by different segments of society for centuries.
American’s general attitude on being subject to limitations on one’s “Rights” usually contradicts the functions and responsibilities of sworn Law Enforcement officers.
In 1829, Sir Robert Peel and his staff wrote the Nine Policing Principles after forming the first modern police force in the City of London, England.
> The Nine Policing Principles
- To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
- To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties depends on public approval of their existence, actions, and behavior and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
- To recognize always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing cooperation of the people in the task of securing observance of laws.
- To recognize always that the extent to which the cooperation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
- To seek and preserve public favor, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of thesubstance 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 humor, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
- To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public cooperation 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
The Nine Policing Principles, if adhered to, can help solve what some perceive is wrong with modern Law Enforcement.
> United Nations Adopted Eight ‘Code of Conduct’ on Law Enforcement
The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner in 1979 published Eight Articles of Law Enforcement Accepted International “Police” principles. The UN Eight Articles mimic the Nine Peel Principles within accepted modern-day language and verbiage.
> Code of Conduct
1. Law enforcement officials shall at all times fulfill the duty imposed upon them by law by serving the community and by protecting all persons against illegal acts, consistent with the high degree of responsibility required by their profession.
2. In the performance of their duty, law enforcement officials shall respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the human rights of all persons.
3. Law enforcement officials may use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty.
4. Matters of a confidential nature in the possession of law enforcement officials shall be kept confidential unless the performance of duty or the needs of justice strictly require otherwise.
5. No law enforcement official may inflict, instigate, or tolerate any act of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, nor may any law enforcement official invoke superior orders or exceptional circumstances such as a state of war or a threat of war, a threat to national security, internal political instability or any other public emergency as a justification of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
6. Law enforcement officials shall ensure the complete protection of the health of persons in their custody and, in particular, shall take immediate action to secure medical attention whenever required.
7. Law enforcement officials shall not commit any act of corruption. They shall also rigorously oppose and combat all such acts.
8. Law enforcement officials shall respect the law and the present Code. They shall also, to the best of their capability, prevent and rigorously oppose any violations of them. Law enforcement officials who believe that a violation of the present Code has occurred or is about to occur shall report the matter to their superior authorities and, where necessary, to other appropriate authorities or organs vested with reviewing or remedial power.
In today’s modern society, Ninety-Eight percent of the United States and the World Wide Sworn Police Officers adhere to one of the or both two principles (Code Conduct). It is the few (as in any group or profession) that cause what problems there are today.
