IN the rest of the Anglosphere, police are trained to calm a situation: In the US they are trained to enforce compliance.
IN the rest of the Anglosphere, police are trained to calm a situation: In the US they are trained to enforce compliance.
That’s the heart of the matter. The former are honorable and respectable, and the latter are tyrants who deserve contempt and derision.
Personally I find it amazing how many “conservatives” fall into line to protect cops from suffering the legal consequences of their brutality. It’s as if it completely doesn’t compute that police are just another manifestation of big government.
It’s a role-flipped, but equally obtuse mentality as the libs who want more government and then complain when that more government comes in the form of militarized police. That IS what more government is.
A person who is not inherently suspicious of government action is no conservative. Even - no, ESPECIALLY - when the government action is by means of police or military.
And the roots of that attitudinal difference go back to Peel's original concept, cited in the article. The essential point for Peel was that this was to be a civilian force, accountable to the local community: and thus the converse of the militarised police of the European mainland, who were unequivocally a means of state control. The 'unarmed' status reflected this: the police were not part of the 'armed forces' - the soldiery - who could nonetheless always be called on for support when arms were required (rarely, as it happened).
Echoes of this concept still survive to this day, despite all the radical societal changes of the last 175 years.