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Comment by lostlogin | Hacker News Reader

Talking with police is interesting. I talked policing with a police officer who had worked in New Zealand, the UK and Australia. These are countries that are relatively close in culture and the differences in policing described by the officer were striking. A lot of this was in relation to what the police role was and how other services cooperated (or didn’t). It would be great to have a description of system differences from an officer who had worked in more systems.

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Could you expand on that? I'm really curious about what the differences were.

One starting observation I'd venture is those countries (and Canada) base their policing on Peelian principles, which establish a basis of policing and the relationship with the public. The US police culture had different roots.

Edit: for reference, the list of principles that were issued to each new police officer in London from 1829 onward.

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder

2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions

3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public

4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force

5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by pandering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law

6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient

7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and 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

8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary

9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it

I find much wisdom there, and as I go down that list I find it hard not to think for each item of counter-anecdotes from the news about US policing in recent years.

The problem is that these principles work great in a homogeneous society where everyone has some kind of stake in the societal outcome. If you take people with a particular skin color and enslave them and otherwise systematically discriminate against them to varying degrees over the course of 400 years then these principles break down. It is going to take a long, long time -- probably multiple generations -- for American society to recover from 400 years of institutionalized racism.

Dude you have it backwards because the police in the US historically functioned to support slavery.

I bet you didn’t intend it to be but your argument basically blames the victim, when it’s the oppressor who is guilty of a crime - not the oppressed.

It’s the fault of the oppressor for oppressing, that is the blocker to progress, not the response of the oppressed.

The police are what need to change because they were and are a core part of the problem.

Your other points may also have relevance, but are irrelevant until the root cause - which I describe above - is addressed.

If your point was that because of America’s history of racial violence and terror, we need to defund (as opposed to reform with Peelian principles) the police since they were a key component of that system, or something along those lines, then please forgive my mis-understanding :).

I have no idea how you could construe what I wrote as disagreeing with you.

It sounds like I misread it - my apologies.

The reality is that US police kill all races at shockingly high rates. Black people are killed at a higher rate, but they are a minority of those killed. The problem of the US police system is excessive use of force against all races, compounded by racism.

Take the UK for example. The UK also has a history of importing slaves, it also has minorities living in poor neighborhoods, it has a similar degree of income inequality as the US, but the rate at which UK police kill civilians is orders of magnitude lower. The UK has as many police killings in a quarter century as the US has in a month, despite having a fifth of the population.

The US police system’s approach seems to be to fight fire with fire, not prevent the fires in the first place. Hence the call to defund the police and invest in prevention. But I think defunding is only part, the police need to be retrained to prevent and deescalate, not to respond to all resistance with deadly force.

I think the problem starts long before the deadly force. It's not just the rate at which black people are killed, it's the rate at which they are harassed for minor offenses like jaywalking.

The below reddit link includes a video of a black man being cited for driving 65 in a 70 area, and it hits home.

He has been pulled over many times in the area so is cautious, but it turns out that is a problem too. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/h0xxva/comment/ftq6...

The UK isn’t a homogenous society like that and it also has hundreds of years of institutionalised racism to deal with. So I’m not sure that can be a reason why these principles wouldn’t work in the US.

Just to clarify: Canada could hardly be less homogenous and it works here. We call it a “cultural mosaic.” We even have a whole French province that demands special rules. We make it work... mostly alright. Our indigenous people’s are coming out of a few centuries of rough treatment though and there is a large and public reconciliation effort being made by the government and by many institutions. Hopefully the future will be better in that area

The guy was quite down on his time in Australia, and the aggressive policing he was expected to do. He contrasted that with his time in the UK and (particularly) in NZ the role seemed to allow more tolerance and leeway and was described by him as 'progressive'. The NZ police aim seemed to be to get compliance without police charges or fines by engaging in a less combative manner. He described quite harsh measures taken for minor disruptive behaviour and property damage (eg graffiti) in Australia. He had a low opinion of the way children were managed in all three countries. Police had little option but to lock young kids in cells when found out and about late at night in NZ. He had previously had the ability to get social services in the UK could house a child for a night. This was theoretically available in NZ, but never was in practice. So when they found a kid out in the small hours, if they couldn't find their caregivers, the kid had to go to a cell. He was very down about this. I left with the distinct impression that in order of severity of policing (for want of a better term) it went from a relatively relaxed and easy going NZ to UK then a quite severe and punitive Australia. It would be interesting to know if this is borne out by others impressions/data.

Aside from a notable exception in the Australian Capital, it's worth noting that in Australia you have the Federal Police (AFP) which is responsible for policing federal offences, but the states are responsible for enactment and policing of most things that Americans would consider "everyday policing".

The main issue this represents in your story is that it's not correct for the most part to present an "Australian experience" of policing, as the laws and enforcement are state level matters (of which there are ~8). A level i think we're missing might be city-based law enforcement? Each state has its own laws, population, and police force. while it's true we're not going to have as much variation as say France vs Sierra Leone, policing in QLD/ACT/NSW/NT/VIC is liable to be fundamentally different. furthermore, we've got federal gun control, and in a federal welfare system that would almost look like a universal income to many American contexts (indeed, I recall one discussion I had recently with an online friend about where the UBI rates being discussed as impossible were effectively the ones our welfare system currently provides), notwithstanding the difference in practice between remote indigenous/rural/urban/ migrant law enforcement.

All this can make it somewhat frustrating drawing analogies between the American experience and the local one (and I'm not just talking about Americans drawing lessons from ours, I also mean Australians being influenced by portrayals of American law enforcement and issues in popular media/culture). I imagine that's just as frustrating as pretending that law enforcement is the same across a nation as diverse as America.

The officer had worked in Queensland, but I don’t know what branch or department. I hadn’t considered the various branches that they have. I also wouldn’t be considering his views (via me) as anything other than a possibly interesting anecdote.

So for those wanting to know a bit more context (I'm genuinely bemused that someone can get downvoted on HN for provided factual context that's relevant for comparing the various police systems, but whatever...), Queensland is a primarily tropical/humid-subtropical/semi-arid state marginally bigger than Alaska and ~three times the size of Texas. Its held to be "relatively conservative" (the most conservative by some, holding some 7 of the 10 most right-wing electorates in the country at last election) by Australian standards, and is weird from a demographics point of view because its a state (possibly the only one?) in Australia where the majority of the population lives outside of the metro capital city area, and from a politics point of view its remarkable because its the only unicameral state parliamentary system in the Australian federation.

The state had 32 years of unbroken rule by the national party of Australia, which ended, not coincidentally to the end of the rule or this topic, after an inquiry into police corruption at the end of the 80's. It is also no coincidence that the state was the founding site of Australia's one nation party. As you move further north you begin to have more isolation and contact with indigenous communities, but its also a diverse and complex state, hosting both the brisbane/gold-coast and cairns areas, hubs of tourism that ferment more "liberal-eco" attitudes in contrast to some of the rural/farming/conservative bents. There is a significant military/mining presence in the north, as well as a significant retiree community/attraction because of the climate/weather.

I'm trying to describe it as objectively as I can. Its also stunningly beautiful and I grew up there :P I'd joke and say to my american readers, it would be like using florida/texas/alabama/bahamas/california as representative of the practices of US policing, but that is an honestly terrible analogy.

Thanks for both of these comments.

I"ve lived in all 3 of those countries (although have never worked for the police). My experience is just as your friend describes.

The cops in Oz are truly awful! There was a recent scandal where cops were strip-searching teenage girls just for fun. Cops there will also spend more time fining people on bicycles that don't have a bell, than they would in any important crimes.

It differs a bit by state. Apparently NSW and Vic have it worst, although QLD is right up there. Of course in the nation's capital, Canberra, they have the soft ones.

NZ police hiring process is pretty selective. They encourage you to have a higher learning degree to fallback on if you get taken out physically. On top of that they select for personality traits and culture fit so they end up with quite a homogeneous group of people. (And no, that does not mean all white..)

My run ins with them are generally pretty decent, mj isnt legal in nz but if they catch you they're generally more annoyed youre not doing it at home. Because then they have to write you up.

Australian police are much more americanized, theyre far more interested in catching people out with sniffer dogs at train stations and the like. NZ you dont see this sort of thing because criminalizing drugs is well proven to be ineffective.

I would say the major difference is that nz cops arent armed by default. Their guns are locked in the boot of their car and takes some serious circumstances to get them drawn.

America it seems like all you need is a traffic stop at night.

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