Sir Robert Peel's Nine Principles of Policing

New Westminster Police Service ^ | 184? | Sir Robert Peel

[jdege]

SIR ROBERT PEEL'S NINE PRINCIPLES

---

• The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
  
  

• The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of

  police actions.
  
  

• Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of

  the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
  
  

• The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of

  the use of physical force.
  
  

• Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating

  absolute impartial service to the law.
  
  

• Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only

  when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.
  
  

• Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition

  that the police are the public and 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.
  
  

• Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the

  powers of the judiciary.
  
  

• The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in

  dealing with it.

[jdege]

Where did things go wrong?

[Common Tator]

The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

There is no way police can prevent crime and disorder. You would have to have 3 cops for every person. Each would work a shift preventing a single citizen from comitting a crime.

What cops do is catch people who committ crimes and create disorder.

How can a cop prevent disorder. He can only catch people who have created disorder after they have created disorder.

I didn't read the rest of this bull Crap, but the only roll cops can play is catch people after they do the crime.

ONLY IN A POLICE STATE CAN COPS PREVENT CRIME. That is why they call it a POLICE STATE

[Junior]

By their very presence, Sir Robert's "bobbies" curbed crime. This didn't mean crime didn't occur, just that it was reduced greatly, and law-abiding citizens regained their confidence to conduct their businesses free from fear.

[FreedominJesusChrist]

The Peelian Model of policing is already outdated my friend. It is already being replaced at rapid rates by community policing. Sir Robert Peele was around in the early 1800's and his rigid bureaucratic sytle of policing has caused many modern police departments to be criticized for being ineffective.

[FreedominJesusChrist]

Sir Robert Peele was responsible for extensive reforms in London, England, in 1829. He decided that the police should be set up like the Military and he based his police forces from that of the Prussian Army and the Catholic Church. Sounds crazy, but it's true. It didn't work too well. Since then the police system in America has gone through several different policing stages. Since then, we have had the Urban, Professional, and now Community Oriented policing models.

[FreedominJesusChrist]

The police mandate is 1. crime prevention, 2. crime detection, 3. criminal apprehension. Unfortunately, this is impossible to achieve. That is why Community Oriented Policing is making waves across the country because it works. Besides 90% of all crime is not found by patroling, it is crime that is reported to the police by concerned citizens.

[coloradan]

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and 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.

This is no longer the case. Instead, the police are a separate caste of people, who may own unregistered machine guns, explosive devices, and other paramilitary assault equipment, that is banned from the general public, and the police are held to a greatly different standard of responsibility and accountability with respect to what happens when someone is killed or injured. In particular, when the police kill a citizen, the sanction is time off with pay, but when a citizen kills a police officer, the sanction is the death penalty. In some jurisdictions, the SOP for police is to kill dogs at the slightest provocation, whereas the penalty for killing a police dog is death.

[FreedominJesusChrist]

Law enforcement is only a small part of an officer's job. For instance, in reality police do not discover much crime while out on patrol. In fact, almost all crime knowledge comes to the attention of the police by citizen-initiated phone calls. The media portrayals of the police are far from reality. The average police officer, regardless of police department, only makes on average, fewer than 10 felony arrests a year.

[FreedominJesusChrist]

You are correct in saying that this model does not work. It fact, it didn't even work in the 1800's. That is why most police departments have switched to community oriented policing. You should really ask the head of your police department what model they adhere to, because it is one out of five different models. Community policing works because there is power from the bottom-up, not the top-bottom. Also, a police officer focuses more on getting to know community leaders instead of patroling endlessly looking for crime.