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This article is about law enforcement organizations. There are also: The Police (pop music band) and Police, Poland (a
town in Poland).
Police forces are government organisations charged with the
responsibility of maintaining law and order. The word comes from the French, and less directly from the Greek politeia, referring to government or administration. The word police was coined in
France in the 18th century. The police may also be known as a
constabulary, after constables, who were the first police
officers.
Critics, especially those mindful of the potential for state tyranny, (see "police state"), argue that police organizations are a means by which the state implements its monopoly on the use of force.
Introduction
In most Western legal systems, the major role of the police is to discourage and investigate crimes, and if able to apprehend suspected perpetrator(s), to detain them, and inform the appropriate authorities.
See criminal law.
Police are often used as an emergency service and may provide
a public safety function at large gatherings, as well as in emergencies, disasters, and search and rescue
situations. To provide a prompt response in emergencies, the police often co-ordinate their operations with fire and medical services. In many countries
there is a common emergency service number that
allows the police, firefighters or medical services to be summoned to an emergency.
Police are also responsible for reporting minor offenses by issuing citations
which typically may result in the imposition of fines, particularly for violations of
traffic law. Police sometimes involve themselves in the maintenance of public order,
even where no legal transgressions have occurred -- for example, in some Australian jurisdictions, people who are drunk and causing a public
nuisance may be removed to a "drying-out centre" until they recover from the effects of the alcohol.
In many countries, particularly those with a federal system of government, there may be several police or police-like
organisations, each serving different levels of government and enforcing different subsets of the applicable law. In the United States of America, for instance, there are typically police forces (city
police, county sheriff, state trooper etc.) run by local and state authorities, as well as several federal law enforcement
agencies (including the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the United States Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the
Secret Service), endowed with police or quasi-police roles.
In countries following the French model, there may be two separate national police agencies: the National Police and the
Gendarmerie, with overlapping but different jurisdiction, possibly in
addition to local police forces.
Most countries are members of the International Criminal Police Organization -
Interpol, established to detect and fight trans-national crime and provide for international co-operation
and co-ordination of other police activities, such as notifying relatives of the death of foreign nationals. Interpol does not
conduct enquiries nor arrests by itself, but only serves as a central point for information on crime, suspects and criminals.
Political crimes are
excluded from its competencies.
Police armament
In many jurisdictions, police officers carry firearms in the normal course of
their duties. In the United Kingdom and some other countries, police
are not normally armed but are issued weapons in special situations. Police often have specialist units for handling armed
offenders, and similar dangerous situations, and can often, in extreme circumstances, call on the military, sometimes including special forces like the
SAS. They can also be equipped with non-lethal (also known as "less than lethal" or "less-lethal") weaponry, particularly
for riot control. Non-lethal weapons include batons, shields, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and stun guns. The use of firearms or deadly force is typically a last resort only to be used when necessary to save
human life, although some jurisdictions allow its use against fleeing felons and escaped convicts. Police officers often also
carry handcuffs.
Police compared to military
Although both the military and the police carry weapons, the equipment, training
and tactics used are very different. Generally, the police use the minimal amount of force necessary to maintain order. The
military is trained to defeat the enemy and is less concerned about potential collateral damage. In the United States, the
federal military is generally proscribed from enforcing the law by the Posse Comitatus Act, although state militias (National Guard) can serve police functions in some circumstances. Police and paramilitary
units generally function very poorly as military units and are usually destroyed when they attempt to fight a military force.
Conversely, most professional militaries consider police activities to be a distraction from their primary goal, and when
militaries attempt to operate as civil police forces, they usually alienate the population that they attempt to serve. One reason
is that soldiers are seldom tried in riot control and may apply deadly
force when pressed too much (see Kent State shooting for an
example). Police activities are part of military operations other than war.
In some countries, the line between military and police can blur, especially in
a military dictatorship or a country experiencing
internal upheaval or war. The result is often the creation of paramilitary forces having mostly military training and mostly police equipment.
In some countries, there exists a police force known as the Gendarmerie
that is often nominally military, while serving as a normal police force for most purposes.
Difficult issues
Some police organizations, especially in multi-racial or multi-ethnic areas, may have be faced with a perception that racial profiling is occurring. Police organizations also must sometimes
deal with the issue of police corruption which is often abetted by a code of silence that encourages
unquestioning loyalty to one's comrades over the cause of justice. In the US, this is accomplished by having an independent or
semi-independent organization investigate such as the FBI, internal affairs, or the Justice Department. Finally, in many places, the social status and pay of police is low
leading to major problems with recruitment and morale.
For more information on extreme forms and various views of policing, see secret police, police state, corporate police state, thought police, and police brutality.
Policing structures
Most police forces contain subgroups whose job it is to investigate particular types of crime.
In most Western police forces, perhaps the most significant division is between "uniformed" police and detectives. Uniformed police, as the name suggests, wear uniforms, and their jobs involve overt policing operations, traffic
control, and more active crime response and prevention. Detectives, by contrast, wear 'business attire' when their job is to more
passively investigate serious crimes, usually on a longer-term basis. In some cases, police are assigned to work "undercover",
where they do not identify themselves as police, sometimes for long periods, to investigate crimes, particularly organised crime, unsolvable by other means. This type of policing shares much
with espionage.
Specialised groups exist within the branches either for dealing with particular types of crime (for instance, traffic
policing, murder, or fraud) or because of
particular specialised skills they have (for instance, diving, operating helicopters, bomb squad, and so on). Most larger jurisdictions
also retain specially-trained quasi-military squads armed with small arms for
the purposes of dealing with particularly violent situations. These are sometimes called SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) teams.
Various police agencies
For concepts, see also:
Police methods, services, and tactics
Ethical issues related to police
Notable historical police personalities
For fictional accounts of police work, see also: Crime
fiction.
External links
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