Is Policing the Same Across the U.S., Canada, and the UK?

BY DAVE OLENIUK

I have recently retired from a 31-year career as a police officer in Canada. I was a Staff Sergeant with the Hamilton Police, with my career culminating as an investigative team leader and case manager in the Homicide Unit. I was also the Vice President of the Hamilton Police Association. Hamilton is a Canadian city of half a million people, about an hour from the U.S. border near Buffalo, NY. For the duration of my career as a police officer since 1991 (the same month as the Rodney King incident and riots), I have heard calls for reform. It’s an eternal challenge and one in which every generation seems to think they are unique.

Calls for reform seem to bounce between extremes— from banning chokeholds to burn it all down (e.g., Defund the Police). Taking a broader perspective and accepting that every responsible institution simply needs to reflect and improve on a continuous basis requires more keystroking than a short, angry rant—it’s no fun, but even a bad video that goes viral can have a disproportionate global impact.

Contrasts

Policing as we know it is a relatively modern institution. It was “started” in 1829 in London, England, by Sir Robert Peel, guided by his maxim “the police are the public and the public are the police,” together with an ever-evolving concept of the rule of law within the British tradition.1

In the West our police are paramilitary; in most of the world they are indistinguishable from the actual military, with a mandate of public order. The idea of service to the community (policing by consent) is a uniquely Western concept.2 But even within the Western world, there are differing opinions as to what role a police officer should play in society and how much they should be paid. Comparing policing across different countries reveals important insights.

There are three distinct legal jurisdictions in the United Kingdom: (1) England and Wales, (2) Scotland, and (3) Northern Ireland. Each has its own legal system, distinct history, and origins, although there is a substantial overlap between these three legal systems and the three legal jurisdictions. The UK has a mix of regional and specialist police forces. In England and Wales, there are 43 territorial police forces of varying size; 39 in England and 4 in Wales. Scotland has a single police force for the entire country (Police Scotland), as does Northern Ireland (PSNI). The police, although hired and trained locally, are conceptually more like a national force. With the same training, uniforms, and relative pay, the individual forces could be viewed as more akin to independent divisions within a large corporation. The average officer in the UK does not carry a firearm, which is an anomaly relative to other parts of the world.3