The Anarchist Encyclopedia by Sbastien Faure;

Author:Sbastien Faure;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2018-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

Police

Police (from Latin politia, administration of a city.) Organism that has as its end the executing of laws, decrees, and ordinances issued by the legislative power aimed at safeguarding the security of property, persons, or the state.

Every law, every rule obviously supposes a sanction. Every sanction necessitates a mechanism of constraint. As far back as we go in the evolution of societies this concern on the part of legislators can be seen: ensuring the tranquility of the state and the security of its citizens, i.e., order, through a number of measures, prohibitions, and prescriptions. When order is based on faith, on belief in a supreme magistrate, each believer, that is, each citizen, participates in the state police and the legislator, who is at the same time the prince, can easily oversee the execution of the law without the special, distinct organism that is the 20th century police.

In ancient Greece “the police were intermingled with the totality of institutions that constituted the city, and ancient writers meant by a well-policed state one in which the laws in general ensured internal peace.”

Under the Romans it was in the time of Augustus that the police became a specific institution, made necessary by the extent of the vast state that contained peoples with unharmonious beliefs in one or several “gods.” It also quickly became a frightfully tyrannical political police force. The proefectus urbis, having the curatores urbis under his orders, scattered lower agents about Rome and the provinces, charged with reporting on anything offensive to Augustus’s power. This police force disappeared with the “barbarian” invasions and only reappeared several centuries later with the great movement for the liberation of communes. In purchasing the right to administer the cities in which they lived, the bourgeois also took security measures on behalf of their persons and their property. They had belfries constructed from which the bells sounded the tocsin when highway robbers or armed bandits approached.

All night an armed police body, the watch, roamed the streets preventing thefts and murders and, the singers of the time tell us, “frightening lovers.” A guard service watched the city gates, which were closed at sunset. Every city had its police, its regulations, and its organization. This police force was often opposed by the police established by mistrustful craft bodies. Soon, police forces were established by craft bodies, mayors, municipal magistrates, consuls, and municipal officials and, in seigneurial fiefdoms, by judges delegated by the lord.

An edict of 1669 established a special magistrate in Paris who, under the name provost lieutenant for the police, and later lieutenant general of police, had all the security branches under his orders, including forty-eight policed superintendents and twenty inspectors. For the first time justice and the police were two distinct organisms. We find (in the Larousse Encyclopedia) in the preamble to this edict an amiable definition of the responsibilities of the police: “The police consist in ensuring the repose of the public and individuals, in purging the city of whatever might cause disorders, in procuring abundance and allowing all to live in accordance with his condition.

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