When selecting a uniform, he did some interesting things. The tunic was a tail coat similar to that worn by servants, but the headgear was a top hat, not usually worn by servants, but rather by the rich and powerful. The intent was to give a sense of authority, but not too much.

I doubt that very many cops today know about the Peelian Principles, let along know what they are. Read them, and then contrast the expected bhavior to the way our cops behave.

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

Absolutely right. When I was a kid, cops were just cops, Pretty much everything was done by a smartly uniformed street cop, especially warrant serving.

Back then, an arrest warrant was served by a pair of uniforms knocking on the door. Unless the person sought was extremely dangerous, the SWAT team was never involved. Today it is always the SWAT team or a raid team of plainclothes in raid jackets, maximum intimidation, flash bangs etc.

Recall the infamous case where a man and his kids had their door kicked in by a SWAT team because they were looking for his ex, for of all things, student loan fraud.

The scary thing, is that as you point out, the “normies” are starting to get fed up. Sure, everyone disliked the cops when one was behind you when you drove, or worse, pulled you over, but we recognized the need for them, and held them in a certain respect. Not anymore. And they have no one to blame but themselves.

The “thin blue line”, referring to citizens as “civilians”, the over militarization, the name change from “peace officer” to “law enforcement”, are all biting them now because they do not resemble the police we used to know who were an integral part of the community. Now they are behaving more like an occupying army, and we have started to resent it. They are our servants, not our masters

One of the problems with the “kumbaya anarchists” as I call them, is that just like communists, they believe in the perfectibility of man, or even that he is already perfect but warped my “society”. If we did away with police and the attendant brutality, humans would respond with willing cooperation, informal mediation etc. etc.

What they forget, or never knew, is that they are for the most part, right, but only for the most part. Most people are altruistic, cooperative, and law abiding, and if the world were populated only by them, “intervention teams”, and “social workers” might be able to replace police. But police exist and carry weapons and use force, because there is a minority of people who are simply bad, and it is because of them that we need police.

As Kirk pointed out earlier, the sociopath cooperates and plays along because it suits him at the moment, and there are direct benefits to him.

Look at all the “game theory” studies, and you will find the conclusion that cooperation and altruism is the best course, because there are tangible mutual benefits over the long run. Cheating gets a short term advantage, but very quickly, if you cheat too much, nobody will cooperate with you and cheating will become universal, and everyone looses overall.

The other thing keeping the sociopath in line is that if he steps too far over it, the power of the state, or community, will come down on him.

However, give him a situation where the normal rules break down, (like a civil war), and all bets are off.

Most of us obey the law and the unwritten “civil society rules” without really thinking about it. We may speed a bit on the highway and not sort our recyclables properly, but that is about it. The dirty little secret is that civilization and society functions mostly by voluntary compliance and tacit agreement. There are not enough cops, inspectors, IRS auditors etc. to actually enforce the rules if everyone decided to break them.

Civilization/civil society works, because the need to use force is comparatively rare, but when it is necessary, it is usually VERY necessary.

Fascinating, isn’t it, how our oh-so-smart elites want to do away with that same institution without thought to the various and sundry implications of Chesterton’s Fence?

They are not going to like what “defunding the police” looks like, once society works through the implications. We’re in for a couple of rough decades before something workable shakes out.

However, as I’ve told many of my cop friends, either you rein in the abuses, or you’re going to be replaced by something else. There is nothing mandating that the social function area now filled by police as we know them has to remain filled by them.

The other thing I told them was that everything would be as it was, until one day they went into work and found that it wasn’t. This has taken place, and one of the guys I know who went to work in Portland recently dropped me a line to say “You were right…”.

I’m not as happy at that acknowledgment as I might be, but there you go.

He is (in)famous for his study of the Yanomamo(sp?), the so called “fierce people”. Alleged to be the most violent society in the world. An indigenous tribe that lived in South America, mostly in Venezuela. When he studied them in the late ’70s, they had only fairly recently come into contact with modern civilization and retained pretty much all of their traditional culture including blood feuds, “wife stealing” etc.

At the time, the Venezuelan government was attempting to manage contact with them, and provide some modicum of government services. One of these was the training of village paramedics. The idea being to have someone from each village trained in basic sanitation and preventative medicine, capable of administering vaccinations and so on.

Chagnon relates the reaction of one young tribesman who went on this training course. He didn’t have much to say about the course, but was extremely excited about one of the things he saw in the capital.

What he said on arrival back at the village went something like this:

“Guys, guys! In Caracas they have this thing called a police. I’m not sure exactly how all the details work, but they have this police. If someone does you wrong, instead of starting a feud, these police come. They ask questions to find out who did wrong, and then just take them away. I’m not sure what they do with them, but they are not your tribe or his tribe and no feuds start. We need something like that!”

Funny you should mention the Irish. In Toronto it was slightly different. There were large numbers of Irish in the police and other government departments, but they were all rabid Orangemen. I think your example is more applicable to specific major cities, where I am speaking more generally.