The Force of Law by Mariana Valverde

Author:Mariana Valverde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd
Published: 2020-04-29T15:50:10+00:00

Keeping the Government Secure

The most visible police officers are those who patrol our streets and attend scenes of accidents and crimes. But virtually every country also has officers who are less visible, who in many cases never wear uniforms or otherwise call attention to themselves, who worry not about thefts and burglaries but about the security of the state itself. Some countries have had overt systems of political police, like the Gestapo in Nazi Germany or the KGB (a transliteration of the Russian initials for “Committee for State Security”) in the former Soviet Union. But democratic countries also have political police. In Britain, for example, MI5 officers secretly collect evidence about potential threats to national security. Sometimes the state-security function is carried out not by a separate organization but by special squads within a national police force that also engages in crime fighting in the usual sense. For example, in Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police can be found patrolling small towns in British Columbia and the prairie provinces, but there are also special RCMP squads devoted to organized crime or political threats to the government. And in other situations special squads within military organizations are given responsibility for identifying and interrogating potential enemies of the state.

These days, state-security policing is usually “networked policing” — made up of special units that include representatives from a variety of organizations. For example, many countries now have special squads that include immigration and police officials and that sometimes conduct joint raids on places of employment suspected of hiring illegal immigrants. Similarly, police forces from European countries collaborate in networks in which each police force (and each country) retains the power to make its own policing decisions, but in which information and sometimes resources are shared.

Government officials and senior police executives know full well that many of the most serious threats to government stability and state security are international in nature. The most sophisticated criminals are those who operate across national boundaries, for instance, selling weapons and drugs. But no effective system of international police has developed.

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