{"id":51809,"date":"2020-06-01T16:58:25","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T20:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=51809"},"modified":"2020-06-04T19:02:44","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T23:02:44","slug":"sir-robert-peel-never-came-to-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2020\/06\/01\/sir-robert-peel-never-came-to-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Robert Peel never came to America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Given the current news I think it might be timely to discuss an old white politician who died 170 years ago on the other side of the ocean. Watching police run riot in cities across the country has me thinking about Sir Robert Peel.<\/p>\n

Peel was the prime minister of the UK (twice) and also served as its home secretary (also twice). He started out as a Tory, then founded Britain\u2019s Conservative Party, and ultimately finished his career as a Peelite because by that point the easiest way to describe his political ideology was by just calling it his<\/em> political ideology.<\/p>\n

What Peel is probably most famous for, though, is something else that bears his name \u2014 \u201cbobbies.\u201d That\u2019s one British nickname for the police, a name they get from Sir Robert who, in many ways, invented them. Scotland Yard was his idea. This is why Peel is also sometimes called the \u201cFather of Modern Policing.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t call him that because I\u2019ve seen<\/em> modern policing and I don\u2019t think it looks anything like its supposed father.<\/p>\n

Peel\u2019s big idea was that law enforcement and public order shouldn\u2019t be maintained by soldiers. That\u2019s just military occupation by another name and it would be incompatible with a free society. That would be true, Peel believed, wherever soldiers were tasked with acting like police officers and it would also be true wherever police officers were tasked with acting like soldiers.<\/p>\n

This is the common thread running through all of Peel\u2019s nine Principles of Policing, which he first published in 1829: Police are not<\/em> soldiers. And whenever they act like soldiers, they thereby cease to act like police, which is to say they cease to act legitimately.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I don\u2019t know what to call this thuggish cosplaying nonsense on a residential street in Minneapolis, but this ain\u2019t law enforcement. It\u2019s not even compatible with having laws.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Peel\u2019s principles are sometimes described as his rules for \u201cethical policing.\u201d That\u2019s sort of true and sort of not because it\u2019s redundant. Peel believed \u2014 correctly \u2014 that if it isn\u2019t ethical, then it isn\u2019t policing. There was not and could not be any such category as \u201cunethical policing,\u201d as all that describes is criminality in a fancy uniform and, ultimately, the precise form of brutal and corrupt military occupation that having a civilian police force is supposed to prevent.<\/p>\n

I appreciate that Scotland Yard and all of its bobbies and peelers haven\u2019t done a spectacular job in living up to their Peelian ideals over the last 191 or so years. But I also think it\u2019s at least somewhat better to fail in the attempt to live up to noble principles than it is to fail because you have none, which is what it seems we\u2019ve been seeing from American police in dozens of cities these past few days.<\/p>\n

In any case, here are Sir Robert\u2019s principles. I can imagine a better world in which these were the basis of legitimate policing. But I\u2019ve never had the experience of living in that world.<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> The basic mission for which police exist is to prevent crime and disorder as an alternative to the repression of crime and disorder by military force and severity of legal punishment.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police existence, actions, behavior and the ability of the police to secure and maintain public respect.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> The police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain public respect.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> The degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes, proportionately, to the necessity for the use of physical force and compulsion in achieving police objectives.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> The police seek and preserve public favor, not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to the 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 society without regard to their race or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humor; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> The police should 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 to achieve police objectives; and police should use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.<\/p>\n

7.<\/strong> The 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 are the only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the intent of the community welfare.<\/p>\n

8.<\/strong> The police should always direct their actions toward their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary by avenging individuals or the state, or authoritatively judging guilt or punishing the guilty.<\/p>\n

9.<\/strong> The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police are not soldiers, Sir Robert Peel said. And whenever they act like soldiers, they thereby cease to act like police, which is to say they cease to act legitimately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[202,77,158],"class_list":["post-51809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","tag-copsbehavingbadly","tag-justice","tag-racism"],"yoast_head":"\nSir Robert Peel never came to America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Police are not soldiers, Sir Robert Peel said. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Sir Robert Peel never came to America","description":"Police are not soldiers, Sir Robert Peel said. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}