Discussions on the Police

[easye]

It is like that old saying; "If you owe the Bank $500K they own you. If you owe the Bank $500M you own them".

This are Universities with a town attached, not the other way around. The University isn't going to let the townies (City planners, mayor, city council, etc.) tell them what to do. If anything, the University tells the town what to do.

[nfe]

I'm not sure how many US universities are really situated in towns smaller than the student body, but even that being the case, that doesn't confer an ability to have your own cops unless the state endorses it. It's not the town planners that are making calls about how can create their own police force.

[Peregrine]

Mar 13, 2024 17:44:36 GMT -5 herzlos said:

Why couldn't a college town just have a police officer or station from a bigger area?

Short form: jurisdiction issues. Towns have their own laws and independent government, cops from another town have no jurisdiction there and wouldn't necessarily even know the other town's laws. It's theoretically possible to change all of this but you'd have to convince all these towns to give up their independence and be consolidated into larger units and that just isn't happening in the foreseeable future. And even if there's a consolidated organization controlling them there would still need to be cops in each town. If response times are 30 minutes then cops might as well not exist at all, whatever happens will be over long before a cop can get there.

As for what happens if a crime is committed near the edge of town unless there is an agreement between the two towns the cops from the town it happened in deal with it. There's also the fact that cops have the ability to pursue a suspect across jurisdiction lines if they flee, the border isn't a magic "free escape from consequences" line. If, say, a black person is believed to have a small amount of weed and a large amount of cash the pursuing cops can cross the line, make the arrest, and ensure that once they arrest the money it ends up in their department's toy fund instead of the other town's toy fund.

(Interestingly prisons are usually run at the county level so the various towns in the county have to share the slave labor revenue, assuming it isn't claimed by the county government for their own use. Local cops only get the arrested assets.)

[herzlos]

That seems horribly inefficient. I think some towns here have by-laws but it's otherwise consistent across the country and it's largely irrelevant which town an officer is based in beyond where their locker and boss are.

[Haighus]

Mar 19, 2024 6:02:09 GMT -5 herzlos said:

That seems horribly inefficient. I think some towns here have by-laws but it's otherwise consistent across the country and it's largely irrelevant which town an officer is based in beyond where their locker and boss are.

There are definitely laws at a local level in the UK, but I'm pretty sure the vast, vast majority of it (if not all) is civil stuff not criminal, so zero reason to affect police activity. Stuff like planning regulations etc. where the redress is suing people.

The idea of criminal law varying by every township is bonkers.

[easye]

So, in the UK everyone just follows what the MET says and does? Or is there a regional difference?

[crispy78]

AFAIK criminal law is national. So the law in Scotland is different to the law in England, but the law in, say, Birmingham is the same as the law in Manchester.

[Haighus]

Mar 19, 2024 9:47:20 GMT -5 easye said:

So, in the UK everyone just follows what the MET says and does? Or is there a regional difference?

The Met doesn't make laws, so I'm not sure what you are getting at.

However, we would expect an interaction with Merseyside Police to be similar to the Met to be similar to the Transport Police* etc.

Those police forces will have a different allocation of resources to manage their local areas (for example Merseyside and the Met have mounted police, whereas most police forces do not feel this is needed in their areas) but they broadly follow the same procedures and enforce the same criminal laws. There are some jurisdictional changes between the nations, but the differences are minor.


*With the caveat of this likely being a traffic stop and less likely to be a traffic stop for the others. My friend's dad did get a driving ticket from a copper on a horse though...

[Haighus]

Mar 19, 2024 9:54:22 GMT -5 crispy78 said:

AFAIK criminal law is national. So the law in Scotland is different to the law in England, but the law in, say, Birmingham is the same as the law in Manchester.

Yep, although there is a great deal of concordance between, say, Scotland and England for criminal law. Stuff like murder, manslaughter etc is basically the same.

[Haighus]

Oh, the chief exception is Northern Ireland, where all coppers carry firearms as a notable difference.

[Peregrine]

Mar 19, 2024 9:20:03 GMT -5 Haighus said:

The idea of criminal law varying by every township is bonkers.

Oh, it absolutely is. As an example, my state currently has a law that cities/towns/counties can not pass gun laws but there's a large minority of democrats that want to abolish this law so the bluest cities/towns can pass their own gun bans, opening up the potential to have a mess of different laws where a perfectly legal act in one town is a serious crime a few miles away across a border that isn't even clearly marked in many places. And as absurd as this situation seems it's already the case with knife laws, which have no equivalent state prohibition. A knife that is perfectly legal in one town can get you arrested and convicted a few miles away so you'd better be regularly checking in on the laws in every small town just in case one of them bans your work knife.

And unfortunately this is one of those things that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Towns like their independence too much and it's hard to imagine them giving up that power willingly.

[nfe]

Worth noting on UK national differences - the difference is usually in the crime you will be charged with, the act under which that charge is made, and the penalties associated with it if proved guilty. There are very few things that are criminal acts in one jurisdiction and not another.

For example, some behaviours can constitute hate crimes in Scotland that would not in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but virtually all would be prosecutable under other laws such as breach of the peace or malicious communications. They just carry heavier tariffs with the hate bit added on.

[herzlos]

IIRC Scotland has a stricter drink-driving threshold, stricter domestic abuse and hate crime laws, and classifies air weapons as firearms so require licenses.

So there are definitely things you can do legally in England that you can't in Scotland, but like you said there's not many at all.

The court system is different too but not in any way that really impacts the outcome.

[easye]

I see where you are coming from now. There are local charging differences, but enforcement generally follows national guidelines.

Not like that here at all. We have a patchwork of agencies across the entire US. Organizations like County Sheriff's may handle things a lot differently than the largest City PD, and the State Troopers may have some other priorities and goals.  That's before you get into Federal Law Enforcement Agencies which have their own focus areas. 

For example, elected Sheriff's offices in the US are notorious for selectively enforcing laws.

Of course, keep in mind I am no legal expert.

[herzlos]

US Sheriffs are elected too aren't they? So there's a political bias to it. I remember seeing stuff about Sheriffs campaigning on a refusal to enforce new gun legislation.

Over here there's only really 1 police force in terms of what they can do. City Of London is a bit different with it's own police and the Transport police have slightly different powers but outside of that any law enforcement officer can arrest for any law.