Mark Saunders has made history by becoming the first black to lead the Toronto Police Service. A bit of history is therefore in order.
Every modern municipal police force in Britain, the British Commonwealth and the United States owes a debt to Sir Robert Peel, twice a Conservative prime minister of the United Kingdom.
When he became British home secretary in 1822, he chaired a House of Commons select committee set up to study the creation of a modern police service. However, Peel’s efforts to create a London police force were rejected by the committee, which argued that such a system of domestic quasi-military policing could not be reconciled with a free society.
But London was roiling with unrest caused by the Industrial Revolution, which greatly exacerbated the social and economic inequities endemic to the English class system. Rising crime rates, civil strife and worker dissent stirred the requisite political cauldron that ultimately allowed Peel’s Metropolitan Police Act to become law in 1829.
Peel had served as undersecretary for war and the colonies, as chief secretary for Ireland and was a representative citizen of post-Enlightenment England. He recognized that the suppression of freedom could itself lead to social strife and rebellion and so formulated the guidelines of what’s known as “policing by consent.” The nine Peelian principles of policing (see sidebar) became the model in Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well as the UK.
They constitute what we now call community policing – a form of law enforcement that is not abusive or repressive because its officers are regarded as citizens in uniform.
In the United States, however, from colonial times forward, policing took an extreme form in order to enforce societal disorder.
Slave patrols known as patrollers, or paddy rollers, engaged in what would now be termed “stop and frisk” manoeuvres. Any black person could be detained, queried, searched and harassed. In the South, to be caught off the plantation without a pass guaranteed summary punishment.
At their worst, these patrols were outright terrorist operations. Riding in at night on clouds of dust kicked up by their horses, the paddy rollers would crash through the doors of slave quarters. Armed with bludgeons, chains, knives and guns, they attacked slaves while they slept, instilling mortal fear. Rape and murder were not uncommon.
These paddy rollers operated under the guise of crime prevention, yet – like Peel’s new London police – in fact preserved the disorder caused by social inequity and injustice.
These days we have carding and over-policed marginalized communities. South of the border, young black men die every day at the hands of police, giving rise to protests in the streets reminiscent of the civil rights movement. It’s as if nothing has changed.
As in the U.S. Declaration Of Independence, which declares that “all men are created equal” but was authored by men who owned slaves, blatant and grotesque contradictions exist in society today, but they need not define the police.
The April 15, 2014, the New York Times carried a short op-ed piece quoting New York City Police Commissioner William J. Bratton on Peel’s nine principles of policing. “I carry these with me everywhere. My Bible,” Bratton said.
I was genuinely taken aback: Bratton, NYC police commissioner, embracing what is essentially community control of the police.
During the 60s, that was a rallying cry. But New York’s police can’t be held up as a model force by Peelian standards. Nor can most in the United States. They still endorse the broken windows theory and practise the stop-and-frisk, “shoot first, worry later” brand of law enforcement.
Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, in response to criticism of police violence during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, said “Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all – the policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.” Daley never clarified his comments, and to be fair, he may have misspoken. History, however, shows that truer words were never spoken.
Mark Saunders has a maelstrom of contentious forces to deal with. He is a history-maker. But he must not be content to have as his legacy becoming this city’s first African-Canadian police chief. He must lead the charge to abandon policing’s preservation of disorder.
Gary Freeman recently returned to Canada after a 10-year legal battle with the U.S. government over a 1969 shooting incident involving a Chicago police officer.
9 Peelian principles of policing by consent
1. The basic mission for which police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval and public respect.
3. The police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to secure and maintain public respect.
4. Public cooperation diminishes the necessity for the use of physical force in achieving police objectives.
5. The police seek and preserve public favour by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to the law to all members of society without regard to their race or social standing.
6. The police should use only the minimum degree of physical force necessary only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.
7. The police at all times should maintain 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.
8. The police should always direct their actions toward their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary by avenging individuals or the state, or authoritatively judging guilt or punishing the guilty.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
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