KEEPING THE QUEEN’S PEACE

September 30, 2009

UNTIL the 1970s, Canada’s criminal justice system enforced the criminal law to the extent that law-abiding Canadians had a reasonable expectation of personal safety while going about in public.

Then, successive federal governments chose to pursue the salvation of offenders at great cost to the protection of society. Gullible politicos turned punishment into rehabilitation and demonstrated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that impunity increases criminality. Now we endure ever-present criminality, deviancy and motor–vehicle madness on our streets and byways.

And during this period the decisive role of the police in the criminal justice system has been neutralized by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and by the fact that they are always short-staffed. Yet they must continue to risk life and limb dealing directly with that small percentage of Canadians who are occasional or full-time criminals.

If we accept that a significant police presence does prevent crime, and that there must be police on duty 24 hours each day, then it becomes a question of how many officers will be required in any given municipality to maintain a constant presence. It is essential to have more than a minimum number because, in military terms, being short even one officer will ultimately jeopardize their mission.

Proof of the importance of police in preventing crime was firmly established by the success of the first professional civilian police force established in London in 1829.

I have gleaned a few historical tidbits from Sir Carleton Kemp Allen’s 1953 Hamlyn-Trust lecture, The Queen’s Peace.

In 1828, Sir Robert Peel told the House of Commons that the proportion of active criminals among Londoners was one in twenty-two; and that lawbreaking throughout England was unprecedented and had not been reduced by a century of excessive use of hanging, transportation or branding. Though Peel was aware of almost unanimous public aversion to a professional civilian police force in metropolitan London, he pressed on saying “that liberty does not consist in having your house robbed by organised gangs of thieves, and in leaving the principal streets of London in the nightly possession of drunken women and vagabonds.”

In 1829, Peel sent a force of 3,000 unarmed constables onto the streets of London, constrained by two keystone principles: of first importance, to prevent crime, and second, to be friends of the public. After many years of ups and downs the Peelers brought an end to rampant crime and earned the respect and friendship of Londoners. By the end of the century, crime had reached its lowest point ever and the Queen’s peace was firmly established.

However, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, crime was again on the rise in Britain, prompting Allen to say “that the increase of serious crime within a generation is enormous, and that its quantity is not the only cause for disquiet but also its quality in savagery, ruthlessness and ingenuity of organisation.”

In Allen’s opinion it was an insufficiency of police confronting an increase in criminality that had reduced the effectiveness of the Queen’s peace.

There is eeriness in Allen’s description of a rise in crime in post-war Britain because it accurately describes the current crime-wave in metropolitan Vancouver. In my opinion British Columbia needs a statesman with the courage and tenacity of Sir Robert Peel to re-invent policing in British Columbia and quell rampant crime.

Will it be Solicitor General Kash Heed?

North Shore News – Sept 30/09