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www.polfed.org...
Don’t put police officers at the mercy of undemocratic political mechanisms
22 May 2023
The Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) acknowledges with absolute dismay the letter from Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, and Rt Hon Harriet Harman KC, MP for Camberwell and Peckham, to Home Secretary Suella Braverman calling for undemocratic powers to chief officers under the guise of police reforms.
. . .
The 18 May joint letter, which sets out a police reform proposal written by London’s Labour Mayor and his party’s London MP to the Home Secretary, and released the next day across social platforms, seeks to put police officers at the mercy of a politically motivated mechanism which is both arbitrary and creates bad law. Policing and the protection of our communities should never be undermined in this way and used as a political football.
www.gov.uk...
When saying ‘policing by consent’, the Home Secretary was referring to a long standing philosophy of British policing, known as the Robert Peel’s 9 Principles of Policing.
. . .
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.