Creating a Genuine Policing System

 

 

            I don't think I need to explain that there is nothing presently in existence that could be called a genuine police system: those who take their information from Royal Commissions, research institutes or university studies won't need to have it explained, those who receive their views from Daily Mail and television fiction and the so-called police themselves won't listen anyway.  (Please remember, by the way, that to call them 'police' in this context would be begging the question - petitio principii.)   Even Oliver Letwin, as shadow home secretary, described their record as 'deplorable', and that was according to the standards for which they were established in their current paramilitary form by the Tory home secretary in 1829 - as a militia to protect the property of the middle class.  The record of the so-called police in protecting the rights of other members of the polis is even more shameful, although that has been obfuscated by the soap media's concentration on racism and ignoring all the other social groups they're hostile to.  That the new litter wardens will be ineffective is obvious from the ubiquity of car-crime (ie. offences committed by motorists) while traffic wardens are also under the aegis of the paramilitaries, and the delusions of police staff of being the source of authority, rather than subordinate to Westminster, is dangerous. 

 

            If a genuine policing system is to be created, the first thing to be done is to break the hegemony enforced by the paramilitaries.  Of the four deceits contained in the phrase "officer in the police service" the most harmful and insidious is in the word "the".  If a society is to count as civilised, where each member of the civitas has the right to be helped when threatened  by lawbreakers, then those rights need to be enforced by a number of different bodies, as "policing by consent" can be too easily construed to mean the enforcement of the will of one large faction of society against all the others.   If each faction is to create its own militia, though, to counter balance each other, then there is the danger of undisciplined vigilante squads (to use a phrase by which the paramilitaries like to vilify anyone doing police work) such as the mobs out hunting for 'paedophiles' or even civil war.  An act of parliament is needed to create supervisory bodies to oversee individual police forces and to endow them with the rights to hold suspects, have access to criminal records, use the national police computer(s) and whatever else is needed to do their particular type of policing that the ordinary citizen can't do.  The present system whereby chief constables are answerable to county councils, the Home Office and themselves (eh?) has broken down and a new system of answerability needs to be invented although not all supervisory bodies would need to be answerable in the same ways.  The obvious authorities would be the Commons, the Lords, the Privy Council, county councils and whatever body establishes a force in the first place, be it the Church, trade unions, or simply ad hoc groups of concerned citizens.  One of the main advantages of supervisory bodies created by act of parliament is that channels could be created at the same time for financing the supervisory bodies and the police forces they authorise.  This would obviate the need for separate forces to invoice other forces when they call on each other's services.   Just as there would be overlap and interaction between police forces, with different forces specialising in particular areas such as ethnic group, expert skill (such as gun use or banking), specific function (such as the English phenomenon of pub closing time), different supervisory bodies would have different areas of concern, distinguished according to expertise and region so that each would be concerned with the affairs of others and be able to supervise each other as well as the forces below them. 

 

            But it would of course be unrealistic to hope that any act of parliament of this sort will be enacted in the near future, and not only because support for the 'police' is one of the main currencies by which politicians buy votes.  In the meantime, though, we can encourage other groups to take on policing activities - and to some extent judicial functions where needed - within the framework of the law as it is.  Large organisations, such as the ones mentioned above, would have an advantage here for several reasons: the Church, for one, is already a state institution (sort of); as established, familiar institutions they already command some respect and authority; they've already developed some expertise where skills such as counselling, arbitrating and negotiating are needed; county councils are already, to a limited extent, authorised to establish and supervise police forces; they have the funds to sue the so-called police for funds to do the work, work which the ostensible police are failing in their contractual obligation to perform despite being given complete control over policing budgets.  Money, as always, is a problem, and probably the only individuals who wouldn't be restrained by the lack of it if they wish to take an active part in policing are recipients of the Civil List, who might be glad to find a way of spending it in a way that's useful without being party-political, but many other individuals might want to do something despite not being given the means.  Members of the House of Lords, it might be argued, are under a moral obligation - noblesse oblige - to notice minorities who are denied the benefits of civilised society and to do something to defend them.  Similarly, individuals in society who don't have the benefit of a police force are entitled to defend themselves and perhaps ad hoc groups could be encouraged for particular issues: a telephone tree of people willing to be called out at short notice to defend a newsagent suffering continual racist attacks, for instance.   Ad hoc groups of this sort would be all the more effective if there were a supervisory body which would know of their operations - and registration with a supervisory body would need to be obligatory for such groups above a certain number of members - and observe whether their activities are in accord with the law and the principles of rule of law. 

 

            Nothing's going to change until somebody starts changing things - and that means looking beyond the model that's been oppressively dominant for the last 175 years.   Individuals need to exercise their right to defend themselves from lawbreakers as a way of challenging the monopoly enforced by the paramilitaries, stimulating members of other powerful organisations - including the Home Office and county councils - to do something, and begin a gradual change that will enable a genuine policing system to evolve.  As new structures appear, channels will be opened through which those who would like to become involved in policing can operate without having to be surrounded by colleagues of the character of the typical paramilitary rating.  Not only will neglected minority groups feel they can begin to do something for society but even some of the genuine policemen currently working with the paramilitaries will be able to move into a less rigid and strait-jacketing organisation, bringing their skills and experience with them.