The Bobbies – Keeping the Peace

“Blessed are the peacekeepers, for they shall be called the children of God.”

Jesus in Matthew 5:9

A couple of years ago Jan and I took some of the kids on a European vacation. We spent three days in London. Its safe to say that if we were not “Anglophiles” before, we certainly were after our visit. We were fascinated by the history and culture. One of the things that we found most interesting was the police presence. We had one isolated incident where we saw policemen with weapons but nearly everywhere the “bobbies” were unarmed, and I might add disarming. Despite the crush of tourists milling about most were very personable and happy to talk with us. A recent editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune posted by Melvin W. Carter Jr. reminded me about the bobbies. If you haven’t read that piece it really is worth a review. Carter (who is the father of the present Mayor of St. Paul) was a St. Paul cop for twenty-eight years. I thought what he said was so “right-on” it was worth talking about.

Some history on bobbies and British policing – Sir Robert Peel was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as well as its Home Secretary in the early to mid-1800’s. He is regarded as the father of modern British policing, owing to his founding of the Metropolitan Police Service. Tradition says that he was the original author of the “Principles of Policing”. Thus, the Metro policemen came to be called “bobbies” or “peelies”. I have seen several versions of the Principles with some versions listing nine and some up to twelve. But the following is the generally accepted version:

PRINCIPLE 1 “The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.”
PRINCIPLE 2 “The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.”
PRINCIPLE 3 “Police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.”
PRINCIPLE 4 “The degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.”
PRINCIPLE 5 “Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to the public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.”
PRINCIPLE 6 “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.”
PRINCIPLE 7 “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.”
PRINCIPLE 8 “Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.”
PRINCIPLE 9 “The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.”

These principles form the basis of what many now refer to as Community Oriented Policing. I would think that most of us would say a hardy “Amen” to these Principles. At least I certainly would. But I think especially given the disorder of the last months we would also sadly note how far away some police departments are from fully embracing them. Why is that?

My brother is a career cop. I love hearing stories about his work (when he is willing to share them). Sometimes they are hilarious and sometimes so, so sad. I spent more than half of my career working for cities where I had ample opportunities to work with police departments. Heck, the last ten years of my career the Chief of Police even reported to me (at least in principal on the org chart)! A background like that can lead you to think you know more about policing than you really do. In my more lucid moments, I realize that I am NOT a cop and never have been. This is mostly theoretical for me. It occurred to me that maybe after spewing out my uninformed opinions I should have some REAL cops tell me what they thought of them. So, I called on three cops that I know, love and respect. Here are a few of their points.

• Police work is incredibly difficult. It is burdened with achieving a myriad of different goals all at once. I was reminded that policing is a “Service Industry”. We expect our cops to be friendly and professional in what can be VERY unfriendly and chaotic situations. My brother reminds me that cops deal with people, even the best of us, at our worst moments. But we demand that cops be friendly, kind and professional all day, every day. At the same time there is this “honor” burden that they carry around, or as one chief put it – they must NOT tarnish the badge.
• Police work is dangerous. One of my friends told me that in addition to everything else they had to think about, he charged his people with the responsibility to go home every night to their loved ones – they had to be reminded that they have a responsibility to preserve their own lives. My brother has been injured in altercations with uncooperative citizens. He was at risk many times, probably more times than he would even want his family to know. His story is probably very similar to what every cop has experienced. I can attest to the fact that police work extremely hard to keep themselves AND the citizens that they serve safe – this includes those that they arrest. I have heard them talk about how having adequate force in place when dealing with difficult situations is necessary for everyone’s safety. Unfortunately, adequate force is NOT always in place, in fact adequate force is probably more often lacking than it is in place. Or as one cop put it, community policing is a very fine concept, but it is difficult to remember it when “wrestling a drunk who takes a poke at you” especially when you are all by yourself.
• It is so easy for cops to feel isolated. As I said I believe I have a more-than-average familiarity with what is involved with police work. But many cops feel that NOBODY other than other cops really know what they go through. That is probably because when they are wrestling that drunk and need help, another cop is the only one who is going to help them. And that same abusive drunkard may well accuse the cop of using unnecessary force when it all said and done. And then, amidst all that stress, we demand that cops tell the truth – 100% of the truth.

What can be done to make this difficult task more doable? If Peel’s ideals are to be achieved what needs to happen in our world? Here are a few items, I am sure there are more.
• We cannot underfund this effort. The cries to “defund” the police are so counterproductive. If anything, they need MORE funding. They need to minimize the number of times when cops are exposed to situations without adequate resources.
• We need to make certain that we can attract good qualified candidates for policing. Policing is a service industry that must compete with OTHER service industries for the best and the brightest. Yes, this will cost more money.
• We need to make adequate resources available for training. One of my friends ALSO marvels at the demeanor exhibited by the bobbies. How do they do that? He attributes that to a couple of factors one of which is training. Many departments are including training that recognizes that they will be placed in situations where they will be harassed and under pressure. We must not only equip our cops with adequate physical tools but also with adequate training to successfully use those tools.
• We need to make adequate resources available for recruitment. From my peripheral-police background, I can tell you that finding good candidates is exceedingly difficult. Still that recruitment process must be rigorous and include extensive psychological testing. One of my friends confessed that he was not an early adaptor of the importance of this part of the recruiting process. But he came to see it as indispensable as time went on.

But MORE is needed. A wise man once told me that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. We have tended to address the task of preserving the peace, by adding more and more law enforcement personnel and more and more sophisticated enforcement tools. The amount of military grade equipment utilized in police work these days is alarming to many. What if we really addressed some of the root causes of the disruption of the peace and funded these, ALONG with funding enforcement, to prevent crime and disorder? You know, bring a few more tools to the job. Here are a couple of things to start with:

• Poverty – I have said before that we have far too many people in our society who are so financially down-trodden they feel they have nothing to lose. And they do not see any possible road for them to escape their situation. Minimum wage increases are part of the solution there. But the real key here is education and training. We are wasting the skills and talents of millions of people simply because they cannot acquire the skills that they need to be productive members of our society and to reap the rewards that go with that status. We must adequately fund Pre-K, elementary, secondary AND post-secondary education FOR EVERYONE.
• Housing – While people are on the road to escaping poverty (this doesn’t happen overnight) they need to have a SAFE roof over their head. And yes, I mean this might need to include PROPERLY OPERATED public housing and other publicly funded efforts to assist working-class housing.
• Mental Health – Ask any first line police officer how many of their problems revolve around people with mental health issues. I think they will tell you that this is a SIGNIFICANT problem for them. When did we come to expect that the police department is the best tool to address this societal problem? We have steadily reduced resources for the mentally ill over decades and have main-streamed far too many ill people with little or no resources to help them. Our police departments “inherit” the issues that go with this neglect simply because THERE IS NO ONE ELSE left. After arresting these often-times volatile people, far too often our cops have NO PLACE FOR THEM TO GO, except to jail. How does that help ANYONE?

It is high time that we recognize that our police departments cannot keep the peace by themselves. We need to recognize that keeping the peace is a job that requires MANY types of efforts, ONLY ONE OF WHICH is law enforcement. Despite the scathing criticism that has fallen to some of our police departments, I believe that there is near universal support for keeping the peace. Why not recognize that the strengthening of our social fabric through efforts like those noted above is a part of that job? I do not see how it can work if we don’t. We can’t ever hire enough cops. We must address policing in the context of all our societal needs. As noted above, cops are not mental health professionals. They are not housing experts / housing providers. They are not educators. All these needs must be addressed ALONG with a fully functional, adequately funded and trained police force. THEN maybe we have a chance to reach Bobbie’s principles.