> How could a democratic society founded on self-governance depend on police governance and still be free?
This is something that I see radically different between the USA and Europe. Europe had more authoritative states and police enforcement moved from repression force to citizens service. In the USA the path seems the opposite. From self-policing and freedom towards repression.
> U.S. courts did more to encourage and sustain, rather than to check, the growing authority of the police.
I guess that there was a need for more law enforcement. But, the trend never stopped even when it made no sense anymore.
> The upshot, as time would tell, was not the protection of individuals’ privacy in their cars but the empowerment of highway patrollers and traffic cops who could take advantage of the thicket of procedures to exercise their power in discretionary, even discriminatory, ways.
This is the pattern that I have seen. The problem with much of the cases that I see on the news is that there is no accountability. Police forces are going to make mistakes, and that mistakes can be lethal. But, I do not see self-reflection or improvement.
When you make the same mistake a hundred times. It is not a mistake anymore but part of the system.
So my question for Europeans is, how much influence in politics do your police have? In the US both police and sheriff unions have incredible influence at local, city, and even state levels. Some of the unions have been known to openly attack with billboards, having squad cars follow, and more, candidates who seek to reform policing and pension benefits; benefits which are excessive on any level of sane measurement. People worry about corporate influence should instead be clamoring to get these entities out of politics.
So the excesses simply are the filtering down effect as judges are appointed in many areas by the same politicians who are under the thumb of these two very powerful political forces. After all, you can just imagine the FUD they can dispense for anyone who dares cross them.
* note, I listed police and sheriff separately because the sheriff side is more commonly associated with prisons; California's sheriffs union is a notorious cause of the growth of that system. they are just that powerful
In Germany, police officers are public officials (Beamte), and public officials are generally not allowed to make any political statements in office or in the name of their office, because they are by law required to serve "the people" as a whole, and not, for example, a political party or some political agenda [0].
They are allowed to do that privately, of course. However, the general influence of police forces on politics is low to zero here. A local police officer (for example, in a small town / village) doing local politics would seem quite strange.
There is of course some influence of police unions on the departments of interior of the states (Länder) and the federal government (Bund), but this is more like an employee complaining to their superior about low-level problems that could be fixed by legislative changes. It is almost never done publicly.
> Some of the unions have been known to openly attack with billboards, having squad cars follow, and more, candidates who seek to reform policing and pension benefits; benefits which are excessive on any level of sane measurement.
If something like that (police cars enforcing a political agenda) would happen here it would almost certainly be national news instantly, and the officers would most certainly (and rightfully so) loose their jobs. We had some bad experience with stuff like that not too long ago :)
Germany has a police union that sometimes makes public statements but overall they don’t seem to have much power.
I think the US is suffering from the disadvantages of decentralization. Local police forces have much more freedom and get away with a lot of stuff. The training is also very inconsistent and generally not sufficient.
Also the fact that sheriffs and judges get elected seems to have the opposite effect from the intended one. Instead of more accountability this seems to lead to less accountability and there is less professionalism.
British police are not a huge influence on politics at the moment, and the extreme weakness of local authorities makes them barely worth influencing; police salaries are set centrally.
There was an attempt to import the American system by establishing "police and crime commissioners". They are absurdly highly paid compared to most political appointments (especially councillors they replaced): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22624096 - but they remain pretty invisible in the news. My pet theory is they were created to establish a funding channel to Conservative party candidates.
All shootings by police are routinely investigated by the fairly independent IPCC.
(The one big exception to all this was the history of the RUC in Northern Ireland, which is a whole other story)
Czech Republic: Absolutely none, that would be unconstitutional. A state policeman can't even participate in local politics. We also have city "policemen" but these have almost zero privileges over citizens.
Italy: it’s complicated. We have effectively three separate police corps that do most of the work (carabinieri, guardia di finanza and polizia) and the first two are nominally under military control. Military personnel is forbidden from political involvement, but they still exert a degree of influence (the carabinieri are effectively led directly by government, and for historical reasons have a larger presence in remote areas than the other two forces, in order to enforce control; because of this role in “keeping the peace”, they often have the ears of rulers, so to speak). Civil police (polizia) has unions, typically led by ex-policemen, which are politicized.
Policing in Italy is still mostly stuck in the “authoritarian” phase, for umpteen reasons that would be tedious to list here. Suffice to say that a country where the largest police force is effectively military police, is not exactly a model.
That's a public sector labor issue, not a "political" one. This isn't the same as say, the police union funding a politicians campaign or telling its members which party to vote for.
I'm not sure I'd say that the UK ever had the police as a "repression force" (leaving aside things like the '84-'85 Miners Strike) as, at least in theory, our policing is based on Peelian principles:
I remember reading a pretty convincing article arguing that the introduction of cars - and abolition of walking the beat - was damaging to policing by consent. vague memory is that being in a car separated officers from being a part of the community they were policing.
Can't find a link or remember the title so it may have been quite some time back - maybe when I still had an FT subscription.
With current budgets and manpower they don't even patrol in cars that much any more, just respond to incidents. That can't be good for avoiding the impression of "us and them".
In the UK, before the police were founded, public-order policing was done by soldiers, who were exactly the sort of repression force that kartan mentions. The Peterloo Massacre was perhaps the apogee of that kind of policing. The establishment of our modern warm and cuddly Peelers was a step in exactly this movement from repression force to citizens service.
Yeah that is a mistake, but also worth noting that the majority in NI were (historically at least) generally rather in favour of what the RUC got up to. Depends I guess if you regard everyone on the island of Ireland as a Irishman!
The way to understand American policing is very simple, "Race".
In general this is true of many other things about America that may not make sense to Europeans. All other explanations are extraneous at best and more likely, disingenuous.
The current system of law enforcement almost from its inception was setup to protect whites from various "threats". Through out the history of the country these "threats" have taken various forms, be it native Americans during early settlement of the country, slaves, Urban crime or more currently immigrants.
When you understand this core purpose of American law enforcement, it will start to make sense :)
I would have accepted "Class", but race on its own is too simple. Race is an aspect of class (or assumed to be) but the real fact is that policing and law enforcement in the US seems to have a huge issue with it's "Two Tract" system: Rich (often) White kid and Poor <race of your choice> kid are not going to get the same treatment by the police, courts, or media when they drunkenly drive their car into a Walmart.
Remember, the people in power are white, but that does not mean that white people are the people in power.
Class is definitely a part of it but it is unfortunately obscured by Race. If it were merely a class divide you would expect poor whites to align themselves with other groups that are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement but that doesn't happen.
In fact poor whites are treated quite poorly (no pun intended) by lawless law enforcement in their communities. Ever seen an episode of cops in a trailer park(greatly satirized by the show Reno 911:))? It is disgusting how the cops sometimes behave...even so, have you ever seen a rally of poor whites to protest poor law enforcement treatment?
There is an implied bargain that law enforcement exists to protect [whites] against "threats" from "others" and with that most whites avert their gaze when it comes to law enforcement abuse.
There is a lot more that could be written on this topic, HN is probably not the best forum for that:)
>This is the pattern that I have seen. The problem with much of the cases that I see on the news is that there is no accountability. Police forces are going to make mistakes, and that mistakes can be lethal. But, I do not see self-reflection or improvement.
This. You can blame about cars, tazers, unions, culture all you want (and those things certainly do affect the shape the problem takes) but as long as the police get to keep screwing up with no proportionate negative consequences and nobody to deliver said consequences nothing will change.
1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise 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 recognise 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 recognise 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 recognise 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 recognise 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.
HN tip: the site collapses single carriage returns. When you paste a list like that, doubling the carriage returns makes the list more readable, like this:
1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise 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 recognise 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 recognise 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 recognise 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 recognise 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.
This article feels like it ends without actually getting into the depths of the problem. Everything it says is reasonable but it leaves out so much nuance and context. It's like they're bending over backwards to say "whoops, look at this authoritarian hole we've dug for ourselves, looks like it was all just an unintentional consequence of cars." The fact of the matter is that every step of the way, police, prosecutors, judges and citizens looking to enforce law and order were complicit in the described erosion of civil rights while out in public. It's not like this happened accidentally. Sure, the societal changes that came about as a result of cheap personal transportation aggravated the problem but every inch we slid down the slippery slope was the result of many people pushing us in that direction.
While not every erosion of civil rights is justified, there is a very difficult balance that has to be maintained between privacy, and the ability to do effective investigation.
This is something that I see radically different between the USA and Europe. Europe had more authoritative states and police enforcement moved from repression force to citizens service. In the USA the path seems the opposite. From self-policing and freedom towards repression.
> U.S. courts did more to encourage and sustain, rather than to check, the growing authority of the police.
I guess that there was a need for more law enforcement. But, the trend never stopped even when it made no sense anymore.
> The upshot, as time would tell, was not the protection of individuals’ privacy in their cars but the empowerment of highway patrollers and traffic cops who could take advantage of the thicket of procedures to exercise their power in discretionary, even discriminatory, ways.
This is the pattern that I have seen. The problem with much of the cases that I see on the news is that there is no accountability. Police forces are going to make mistakes, and that mistakes can be lethal. But, I do not see self-reflection or improvement.
When you make the same mistake a hundred times. It is not a mistake anymore but part of the system.