Robert Peel - Project
Gutenberg etext 13103 From The Project Gutenberg eBook, Great Britain and Her
Queen, by Anne E. Keeling
The Metropolitan Police Act 1829 (10 Geo.4, c.44) was an Act of Parliament introduced by Sir Robert Peel. The Act established the Metropolitan Police of London (with the exception of the City), replacing the previously disorganized system of parish constables and watchmen. The Act was the enabling legislation for what is often considered to be the first modern police force, the "bobbies" or "peelers" (after Peel), which served as the model for modern urban police departments throughout Britain. Until the 1829 Act, the Statute of Winchester of 1285 was cited as the primary legislation regulating the policing of the country since the Norman Conquest.
It is one of the Metropolitan
Police Acts 1829 to 1895.
The police are the
public and 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. - Robert Peel
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[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/227918] |
I will present the Nine Peelian Principles and quotes from Sir Robert Peel:
Nine principles were set
out in the "General Instructions" issued to every new police officer
in the Metropolitan Police from 1829. Although Peel
discussed the spirit of some of these principles in his speeches and other
communications, the historians Susan Lentz and Robert Chaires found no proof
that he compiled a formal list. The Home Office
has suggested that the instructions were probably written, not by Peel himself,
but by Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, the joint Commissioners of the Metropolitan
Police when it was founded.
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The nine principles were as follows: 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. [PHOTO SOURCE: https://slideplayer.com/slide/2508641/] |
OTHER
LINKS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
https://citizenpolicing.com/2015/01/14/sir-robert-peels-nine-principles-of-policing/
