Posted: 11/7/2005 1:03:10 PM EDT
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Until the last couple of hundred years (less than that in most places) the Anglo-Saxon world had nothing we would recognize as police departments. Sheriffs, with the posse comitatus (citizens dragooned into service) were charged with executing writs and warrants, and soldiers might be dispatched to put down riots or rebellions, but law enforcement was at once a private and a general responsibility. A person who witnessed a crime or was a victim would "raise the hue and cry," shouting "bloody murder" or whatever wickedness had been perpetrated, and the citizens at large were obliged to drop what they were doing and assist in apprehending the offender, who would be brought before the magistrate to be bound over if the evidence were sufficient, and to be detained or admitted to bail pending trial. Vestiges of this tradition persist in the general right of citizen's arrest (which is a more widespread right than most of us realize). Eventually, through an involved and fascinating series of events, professional police forces were developed. Originally, other than the power and duty to execute process, police officers had no authority beyond that of the public at large. Gradually, things like abrogation of the duty to retreat, the enjoyment of good-faith sovereign immunity, and authority to perform some actions that might have been criminal had the average citizen done them (e.g., a policeman commits no crime if he comes into your yard to check your neighbor's yard for a prowler, even if he isn't technically in "fresh pursuit;" it's not a battery if a police officer puts his hands on you in order to maintain prophylactic control of even an apparently nonviolent encounter) were added to the officer's arsenal. Interestingly, though, most of the powers of the police continue to inhere in the public at large. Just like a policeman, Joe Sixpack can (in most places) make a felony arrest on probable cause, and can arrest for a misdemeanor committed in his presence (I'm not saying it's smart or that it won't create a paperwork nightmare, but it can be done). Even the "hue and cry" persists in most places - in Florida, for example, it is a crime to refuse an LEO's request for assistance in enforcing the law, just as it was a crime to ignor the hue and cry in Staffordshire in 1523. So, what is a policeman? Why are they, in many places, paid quite well for work that technically (if inefficiently) the rest of us could do for ourselves? Well, some of them are twits who just fell into the work, or who like to exercise power, or who enjoy the status the position confers. However, having known and worked with many, many cops, I believe in my heart of hearts that they are a minority. I believe that most cops are people who believe so deeply in fundamental fairness, in the right of people to be let alone to enjoy the fruits of their labors, that they are willing to devote their entire lives to protecting those ideals. They are people who relish the thought that the tables can be suddenly and decisively turned on a thug who with his youth, attitude, and weapons seizes power and lords it over the small, the frail, the weak, and the old. They are people whose souls ring like the bells of angels when the reckoning comes and a man who has preyed on children finds himself alone and terrified; defenseless and friendless; cowed and broken and having no choice but obedience and submission. They are people who feel from the crowns of their heads to the soles of their feet the pleasure of driving through a quiet orderly neighborhood and knowing that they, working on the side of the Almighty, have helped to make it so. There are police officers who for whatever reason enforce silly and even counterproductive laws; who abuse their authority; who act from mercenary motives: but they are very few. At his best, a policeman is someone who has sworn an oath to Almighty God to protect the helpless, and to do the right thing on behalf of all us who would do those things, but chose other or lesser paths in life. A good cop is an ornament on humanity, and makes God smile. |
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