The New Centurions vs The Bobbies

Jun 3

Jun 3 The New Centurions vs The Bobbies

Joseph Wambaugh is an American cop turned writer…and a very good writer, it must be said.

Wambaugh writes with great sympathy of the police officer’s lot in modern day America, and as outrageous as some of his characters behave (Wambaugh draws extensively on real life incidents), they are mostly noble, if somewhat flawed, individuals.

(It is interesting to contrast the works of Wambaugh with the works of James Ellroy, who also has extensive first hand experience with the LAPD, albeit on the other side of the billy club. Ellroy’s cops tend to be flawed human beings first, doing the right thing only when all other options are exhausted. I will leave it to the reader to decide which paints the more accurate picture.)

Wambaugh’s debut novel was The New Centurions, and the title alone sums up the central thesis of the book: That modern police officers view themselves as an occupying army.

Don’t blame Wambaugh for this; he certainly didn’t create the concept nor originate the circumstances that enable it to flourish, but it does mark a significant failing of his writing that he never explores far enough back to see if that concept is based on a faulty premise.

We need to acknowledge that law enforcement in the United States faced a different set of challenges than in England or Canada.

For one thing, frontier law enforcement often dealt with outlaw bands who retreated into wilderness areas after their crimes.

But before that, law enforcement also stood as a first line of defense against hostile native peoples who resented intrusions into their territory, not to mention captured fugitives from southern plantations or quelling insurrections among enslaved African-Americans.

So, yeah, from the git go American law enforcement carried a certain de facto military aspect to it, an aspect that has only been enhanced over the years by the dumping of surplus military grade weapons and equipment in local police departments, many of them woefully undertrained in how -- and more importantly, when -- to use it.

Canada does not have that problem, despite covering more territory than the United States.

For one reason, there’s a greater respect for law and order on both sides of the badge in Canada, brought about in no small part by Canada not letting people pioneer new territory until treaties were established with native peoples and -- once again, more importantly -- the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had already established outposts and courts to maintain law and order ahead of expansion.

Without constant warfare with native peoples or the mandate to track down plantation fugitives and crush plantation rebellions, Canadian policing could follow more along the lines of English policing, and English policing can all be traced to the remarkable efforts of one very remarkable gentleman, Sir Robert Peel, the “Bobby” who gave English police their name.

Peel was a career politician who did an incredible number of progressive things for England during his long career, of which establishing what we commonly call Scotland Yard being in the second tier of his incredible accomplishments.

But Peel possessed a keen and insightful intellect, and that intellect produced these nine principles as the foundational policy of modern British policing:

To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
To seek and preserve public favour, 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, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the 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.
To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary, of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

That’s pretty much as direct a condemnation of American policing methods as one could hope to find.

Things need to change in America regarding how we police.

We need to demilitarize our police departments.
We need to separate criminal investigation (i.e., detectives) from maintaining the peace (i.e., street officers).
We need to find and remove the bad apples who end up destroying entire police departments by lawless behavior.

But most importantly, we need to teach police they are not an occupying army, but are equal citizens with all those they come in contact with.