⁶

^{Our Chief Law Enforcers – the Police}

⁴ The Police Service has a role to play in shaping the next generation of citizens. By helping to keep children safe, aware of their rights and responsibilities and by helping them to understand and respect the law, we contribute to their development as active citizens.'

Introduction to Police Secondary Schools Involvement Programme.

⁴ It is most distressing to us to be the agents whereby our erring fellow-creatures are deprived of that liberty which is so dear to all—but we should have thought of that before we joined the force/

W. S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance, Sergeant of police.

In this country many agencies or departments are responsible for enforcing laws of one kind or another. Most of the people who do this work are called Inspectors.

For example, the Inspectors of HM Revenue and Customs assess taxes, and investigate the cases of those who do not pay. They collect all taxes, including Value Added Tax (VAT), and customs duties payable on goods brought in from abroad. They are also responsible for ensuring that goods are not smuggled into this country, and are now particularly concerned with the importation of illegal drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, and cannabis, which are almost always produced from plants grown abroad.

There are many more Inspectors of one kind or another employed by different government departments. These include:

• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Inspectors, who must guard against pollution and other damage to the environment. Inspectors also supervise the quality of food, and are concerned with animal welfare.

• Department for Education and Skills Inspectors, who watch over the standards and management of schools.

66 • Our chief law enforcers — the police

• Department of Health Inspectors. This department employs a large team of Medical Officers (usually qualified doctors), whose job it is to watch over all aspects of health care.

All these people are specialists in their own fields, and their job is to make sure that the laws relating to their particular responsibilities are enforced; but by far the largest and best-known law enforcement agency in the country is the Police Force.

THE POLICE

The Police have the most important part to play in the keeping of public order and the protection of persons and property. It is their job to enforce the law, that is, to make sure we obey it. To do their work effectively they need the necessary powers. If the police see that the law is about to be broken they have the power to intervene to prevent that happening. If their orders are not obeyed, they may arrest the people involved. If the police have reason to believe that someone has broken the law, they have the power to arrest the suspect and bring him before the courts.

Centuries before the formation of any official police force, attempts were made to provide some means of 'community policing'. The keeping of law and order was the special responsibility of Justices of the Peace (JPs). They had a system of conscripting ordinary citizens known as petty constables, later simply called 'constables', to walk the streets or visit certain public houses to report any disorder. They were also employed to keep order at public executions and other punishments. The office of constable, still held by all police officers today, is now one of the oldest in the kingdom. The characters Dogberry and Verges in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing were constables.

Keeping law and order has always been a difficult task, and in the days before the modern police force it was a pretty hopeless one. In their desperation Justices of the Peace would also employ thief-takers to catch criminals. Thief-takers were often no better than the criminals themselves. Sometimes they were criminals, who knew the criminal underworld well, and in return for payment would help the authorities to bring other criminals to trial.

The Thief-taker General

The most notorious thief-taker of all was Jonathan Wild, who operated in the early part of the eighteenth century. Nick-named 'the Thief-taker General' he began his career in a small way, informing on criminals who were suspected of crime. Eventually he built up a criminal empire of his own. His speciality was the organisation of robberies and

OUR CHIEF LAW ENFORCERS — THE POLICE • 67

burglaries. He was then paid rewards by the victims for securing the return of their property. Wild would in turn pay the thieves a commission out of this money!

In 1719, as a direct result of activities of this kind, Parliament passed the Second Transportation Act, which laid down that anyone taking a reward for receiving stolen goods, who did not also help to arrest the thief and give evidence against him, was guilty of a 'felony' (serious crime which could result in sentence of death).

Eventually, Wild was himself caught and prosecuted. He had for a reward returned some stolen lace to its owner. He was acquitted of the charge of stealing the lace, but found guilty of failing to give information which would lead to the capture of the criminals he had paid to steal it. He was executed at Tyburn in 1725, and his skeleton is now displayed in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Despite the cruel penalties inflicted upon criminals, the state of lawlessness in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was appalling. By the second half of the eighteenth century, the general population lived with a terrifying sense of insecurity. Gangs of criminals roamed the towns. Any form of transport was risky. Highwaymen held up stagecoaches in broad daylight. The fear inspired by these criminals may not have been much worse than that experienced by certain vulnerable sections of the community today, but it was far more widespread, and afflicted the whole country.

The Fielding brothers

In 1748, the novelist Henry Fielding took up appointment as a magistrate at Bow Street, London. His arrival there coincided with a new and terrifying crime wave. Only four years later, Horace Walpole, author and son of Britain's first Prime Minister, complained of the state of crime in London, saying, 'One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one were going into battle¹. Among the unpaid 'parish constables' of Westminster, Fielding found half a dozen men 'of public spirit' and formed them into a corps of honest thief-takers. They were first known as 'Mr Fielding's People', and later as the 'Bow Street Runners'. To everyone's astonishment, they cleared the streets of robbers.

Henry Fielding's success as a reformer in the fight against crime was followed by many years of hard work by his blind half-brother, Sir John Fielding—known as 'The Blind Beak'. At the age of 33, Sir John succeeded Henry as magistrate at Bow Street. He had been completely blind since an accident in his youth, and following his brother, was for 26 years in charge of the tiny unofficial force of 'policemen' in London. He was said to be able to recognise three thousand thieves by their voices. He produced a weekly list of wanted criminals, which was later published under the name Hue and Cry—the forerunner of the Police Gazette.

The Fieldings provoked much public discussion about having a force of armed men to catch criminals and bring them to trial, but all their efforts to create a regular force failed. This was in part due to another scandal of thief-takers who themselves turned to crime, which brought their schemes into disrepute, and in part due to all the campaigners who