Power to the people

摘要

The key to effective policing, according to Sir Robert Peel, founder of the first metropolitan force in 1829, is that "the police are the people and the people are the police." Getting out in the community, dealing with the daily issues that concern people, earning their respect and co-operation in preventing crime, were the bedrock of good policing, he thought; they also allowed the people to exert an effective democratic check on the police. Several things contributed to the dramatic reduction in crime in New York in the 1990s, a turnaround that remains the world's pin-up policing story; but one big one, says William Bratton, New York's police commissioner from 1994 to 1996, was implementing this Peelian principle.