“The police are the public and the public are the police”.
Policing cannot become a private industry, operating in the service of a community’s wealth, or directed by an individual’s ability to pay. But that’s what’s happening here, and if we let it continue – if this approach is normalised – it will creep and grow. Soon, there will be a range of private companies, competing with each other, employing hundreds, perhaps thousands of private officers. It will create its own economy which will be difficult to dismantle and reverse. Where would it end? Gated communities, patrolled by private contractors? The consequences would ripple and affect house prices, employment, education, social mobility, making our neighbourhoods even more unequal. The wrong direction.
Aside from the obvious practical issues this would throw up, regarding scrutiny and accountability, training and professionalism, legislative powers, public trust and awareness, and confused operational decision making, the overriding concern is the ethics of this practice. It’s at complete odds with the fundamental philosophy spelled out by Sir Robert Peel, the godfather of modern policing in the UK:
“To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute 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 exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.”
Our essential public services must be funded through general taxation, nothing more. And their distribution – as far as is humanly possible – should be based solely on need, nothing else.
I understand the frustrations people must feel, and the fear, living in communities where key services have been allowed to wither or disappear entirely. It must be desperate, to have to consider buying your safety. But this isn’t the answer.
The solution has to come from central government investing in services, and not only in policing, but youth work, social care, public spaces, and education. We’re never going to enforce our way out of crime. And we’re certainly not going to do it by hiring our own bodyguards.
Reposted from Dave Shea’s LinkedIn
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