Policing and the role of the police has been very much in the news over the past several months. The George Floyd tragedy (and others) and the civil unrest that has followed, has highlighted the incredibly difficult circumstances under which police officers labour. Also highlighted, has been the volatile and difficult relationship between the police in many towns and cities, and the communities over whom they have authority.
These challenges arise from a variety of different sources, but I believe that near the top of the list is the issue policing culture, which in itself originates in the kind of training that police officers are given.
The really excellent article By Roge Karma on VOX.com on Jul 31, 2020,
addresses this issue in some detail. Roge shows that the overly militarized nature of police training, and the focus on them as “front-line soldiers in the war on crime” is singularly at odds with the reality of their daily tasks. Mostly, police officers are called upon to focus on being “social workers, conflict mediators, traffic directors, mental health counselors, detailed report writers, neighborhood patrollers, and low-level law enforcers [and], sometimes all in the span of a single shift”.
At Themis Group, we are champions of the concept of “Consent Based Policing” which has an entirely different philosophical approach to policing. Rather than seeing police as a crime fighting and law enforcement force, the Consent model focusses on the following nine key principles
1. To be a guardian of the community and to prevent crime and disorder, as opposed to the repression of the community by force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil 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 co-operation of the public in the task of 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 the law, complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws. By the offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by 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 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.
This philosophy of policing is effective because it derives it's authority not from fear, but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police. The cooperation with the police is founded upon behaviour that secures and maintains the approval, respect and affection of the public for the police guardians who secure their communities.
By Re-Imagining the role of police officers as less Special Forces and more Peace Corps and Re-Focussing their role on the tasks they are most often confronted with, will require a fundamental change to the style and nature of police training and a change on policing culture.
The change to training regimes is less challenging, in that it can be achieved through a decision on the part of police leadership to adopt a new approach. The change in the policing culture for police organizations is more challenging.
This requires a change in style and approach that starts with the leadership and permeates throughout the organization, and it is in this challenging task, that we at Themis Group can help.
We have the skills and the hard won experience in transforming police organizations with a strong paramilitary culture to organizations that fully embrace the key concepts of Consent Based Policing and Community Policing.
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