Policing by consent is about the general public consenting to allow the police to work in their communities within certain guidelines. IF a majority of the general public should at any time decide that what the police are doing is not wholly beneficial to the public, then they the public can demand that the police make changes. That is how I understand it. So why is the Australian public allowing the police to "step over this line" without any complaint?! Wake up people, the right & the power is yours to wield!
Policing By Consent.
To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression
by military force and severity of legal punishment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Essentially, as explained by the notable police historian Charles
Reith in his ‘New Study of Police History ‘in 1956, it was a philosophy of
policing ‘unique in history and throughout the world because it derived not
from fear but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police, induced
by them designedly by behaviour which secures and maintains for them the
approval, respect and affection of the public’.
It should be noted that it refers to the power of the police coming
from the common consent of the public, as opposed to the power of the state. It
does not mean the consent of an individual. No individual can chose to withdraw
his or her consent from the police, or from a law.
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