Preservation of the public peace

Preservation of the public peace is the most important duty the police perform. However, this does not mean that preservation of the peace is necessarily synonymous with all other police duties.

Police departments maintain the public peace by pre­venting riots, mobs and other unlawful assemblages, and by ensuring to every citizen the rights guaranteed to him in the Constitution and in the laws of his state. These are the broad, general objectives intended in the term "the pres­ervation of the peace".

In a practical way, police officers preserve the peace by attending to the thousand and one little things that come to their attention each day. These range all the way from complaints about children, to violations of minor regula­tory measures. Differences between neighbours arise, too, and it frequently takes a Solomonlike arbiter to settle the questions satisfactorily.

Not one of the average officer’s problems is significant in itself but, taken together, they are sometimes sufficiently provocative to cause a serious breach of the peace.

The most important work done by the police in preserving quiet and good order, however, results simply from the police being in existence. People are reluctant to tamper with the law or to take advantage of their neighbours when they know that justice will be done. It is for this reason that police departments today strive to establish the reputation of in­vincibility, and to instill in the potential violator’s mind a conviction that he cannot get away with it.

This kind of public education by the police contributes more to law observance and general maintenance of the peace than anything else that is done.

The role of the police traffic control

The role of the police traffic control may be outlined as follows:

1. Record Keeping and Data Processing. – Record motor vehicle accident facts and collect and analyse data for the purpose of providing standard and adequate area-wide acci­dent records and facts essential to planning accident preven­tion measures through engineering, education, enforcement and legislation.

2. Accident Investigation. – Determine and report the cause, circumstances, and other facts of a traffic accident and obtain adequate evidence to secure prosecution of the vio­lator.

Personnel must be trained for on-the-scene investigation ranging from questioning of participants and witnesses to the examination of the vehicle and other physical evidence at the accident scene. Emphasis should be on truthful re­construction of the accident and prompt police action when violation of the law contributed to the accident. Police ac­tion at the scene directed toward the person causing the ac­cident is highly selective and highly effective enforcement.

3. Enforcement. – All police activity relating to the ob­servation of traffic violations and the police action to be taken such as warning, reporting, summoning and arresting, includes techniques for securing voluntary compliance as open patrol in plainly marked cars, patrol in unmarked cars, and radar and other forms of speed management.

Enforcement also includes techniques necessary to secure co-operation of the courts, and to assist in prosecuting traffic offenders. It also includes active cooperation with the state agency administering driver license control in order that the unlicensed driver and the driver operating while his license is suspended will be kept off the highways.

4. Direction. – Telling drivers and pedestrians how and where they may or may not move or stand at a particular place. punishment is in a county penitentiary, as distinct from a state prison, is generally a misdemeanour; where the maxi­mum punishment is one year in a penitentiary in New York, that crime is by definition a misdemeanour. An offence punishable by imprisonment in a state prison, or capitally, is a felony.