What Kind of Order Do We Want on Policing and Public Office

What Kind of Order Do We Want on Policing and Public Office Speaker: Prof. Thorburn Date: 25 April 2024 Four Stages of the Argument: 1. Origins of English/Canadian quasi- judicial police independence, American partisan policing. 2. Police mission: public/political, not technical. 3. Policing as Public Office: Squaring Independence and Democracy 4. Three challenges: private policing, shared purposes. "Peel's Principle #5" - "To seek and preserve public favor, 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..." Ex parte Blackburn (1968) per Denning M.R. - "Every constable in the land should be, and is, independent of the executive. [...] The responsibility for law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to the law and to the law alone." Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau (1977) - "Politicians who happen to form the Government should be kept in ignorance of the day-to- day operations of the police force and even of the security force." William Bratton - "Crime is Down in New York City: Blame the Police" (2005) Fyfe, J. J., et al, (Police Administration, 1997) - "In virtually every large US police jurisdiction, as well as many small ones, police have at one time or another been improperly influenced by partisan politics or, simply, by crooks who have used political office as a means for accumulating personal wealth." Fyfe, J. J., et al, (Police Administration, 1997) - "In virtually every large US police jurisdiction, as well as many small ones, police have at one time or another been improperly influenced by partisan politics or, simply, by crooks who have used political office as a means for accumulating personal wealth." August Vollmer (chief of Berkeley Police, 1930) - "The modern police department is an up-to-date business institution conducting its affairs on a solid business basis, and to the fullest extent utilizing principles of the several sciences and gradually developing principles peculiar to police service.” David Bayley, (Police for the Future 1994) - The police do not prevent crime. [...] Experts know it, the police know it, but the public does not know it. Yet the police pretend that they are society's best defense against crime and continually argue that if they are given more resources, especially personnel, they will be able to protect communities against crime. This is a myth. Patrick Colquhoun, Treatise on the Police 1796 - Municipal regulations, such as paving, watching, lighting, cleaning, and removing nuisances; furnishing water; the mode of building houses; the system established for extinguishing fire and for regulating coaches, carts, and other carriages; with a variety of other useful improvements, tending to the comfort and convenience of the inhabitants [make up] a complete and masterly system of that branch of the Police... lan Loader ("Why do the Police Matter?" 2013) - "Dealing with crime forms but one aspect of an omnibus police role that is better interpreted as having to do with the regulation of social conflict and the management of order, in respect of which the police's unique resource is the capacity, if required, to wield non- negotiable coercive force." Laurence Lustgarten (The Governance of the Police 1986) - "Policing is politics, just as taxation and education are politics." The Idea of Public Office - - Judicial office vs. executive office: • Judicial office must be impartial and independent of government policy • Executive office must be impartial and guided by government policy Public (executive) office reconciles two aspects of the public: 1. Democratic deliberation on purposes and means 2. Impartial application of means to purposes in particular cases Public Office vs. "Citizens in Uniform" - John Gardner ("Criminals in Uniform"): policing is not inherently public. It is just a set of morally special role that comes with special moral obligations: - "[T]he 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." Defining the Ambit of the Public Office: Three Challenges 1. Private police; public order 2. Shared jurisdiction with other public offices 3. Many public orders: local, regional, national