Two-tier policing – law and order in a free society

Whatever the opinions of senior police officers, they have a duty to restore the sense that the police are the public and the public are the police.

Liberty is rightly limited when it infringes on the life, health, liberty and property of another. As Bastiat wrote in the 19th Century:

The law is the organisation of the natural right of lawful defence; it is the substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over all.

So it is easy to understand why the Peelian Principles¹ on which the police were founded in the same century included:

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.

And yet today, public perceptions of two-tier policing endure. However police chiefs and politicians may rubbish the view, it can only be reinforced by scandals such as the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from a game of football.

Large numbers of people have made up their minds that today police priorities reflect political priorities, though often not the priorities of politicians. That cannot be allowed to endure. Whatever the opinions of senior police officers, they have a duty to restore the sense that the police are the public and the public are the police.