March 1969 — VOL. 50, No. 3 —
Respect for the
Law
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The police blotter is a most interesting
document. Across its pages there passes a panorama of human
troubles, worries and suffering, as well as crimes and tales
of passion. It reveals today that society is passing through
a serious and vital revolution.
Change in people's lives brings with it many problems. Challenges
are being made upon the long-established ways which constitute
our way of life. When these break down or are discarded, law
and order become weakened and there are outbreaks of irresponsibility
and cruelty and crime which affront our sense of human dignity.
Increasing criminality in the midst of prosperity within
the nation presents grave issues to the people of Canada.
They are up against the realization that they must revise
the usual hypothesis that poverty causes crime: they have
to allow for the possibility that affluence, too, can be a
breeder of criminal acts.
Through unnumbered centuries of human experience there have
been built up certain codes of human conduct and standards
of action. One of the most important civil rights is the right
to live unmolested in the enjoyment of life. This is threatened
more and more, despite the efforts of legislators and the
police to prevent crime, and to detect it and suppress it
when it occurs.
In these days
In times of rapid industrial improvement and scientific
progress there is bound to be tension. The difficulty of adjusting
to new ways is very great. We recall, living as we do in the
shadow of the nuclear war-head, the somewhat similar situation
in Europe nearly a thousand years ago. The world had been
expected to end in the year one thousand, and in the reaction
which followed its reprieve there was a burst of lawlessness
and brutality which sickened Europe for centuries.
Today crime is on the increase. It seems to some that this
cannot be looked upon as a passing phenomenon, but as a continuing
process of change in the course of which the high values we
assigned to human life are being assailed and may be radically
modified.
Good citizens, with normal aspirations toward the happiness
which comes from virtuous living, are faced with new obligations.
They need to learn to spot unhealthy situations and administer
preventive medicine; they need to show by precept and example
that the laws they themselves make are worthy of being observed.
But while suppressing without indulgence those who practise
vandalism, destruction and cruelty as part of an evening's
fun, they must recognize with sympathy the fact that the farther
and faster the majority travel the harder it is for the minority
to keep up. Evolution of a technological society leaves behind
those who are unfit, those who are timid, those who do not
try, and those who resent progress. These become the disturbers
of the peace and the criminals.
There is, too, a changing view of what is criminal. Even
our amusements contribute to accustoming us to a lower standard.
Many movie films and television shows and books depict "heroes"
or "villains" who inflict pain and degradation upon people,
or people who stand aside and watch while it is done.
The pace of living in urban centres has created new emotional
problems. We intrude more and more upon the private lives
of one another, with the consequence that new restrictive
legislation becomes necessary, so that there are more laws
to be broken, and breaking small laws contributes to the ease
with which we break the fundamental laws of human society.
Liberty becomes license
It seems as if, in all parts of the world, a surging concern
for the extension and preservation of human rights has been
accompanied by a general decline in public morals. People
sneer at restrictions and demand more and more freedom. Their
taste of liberty and their dislike of restraint cause some
to go from liberty to license. They abuse freedom, disregard
the rights of others, and exceed their own rights by breaking
the rules of conduct laid down by the majority.
If civil rights mean anything they mean the inviolability
of the dignity of man, which requires that other people refrain
from molestation and violation. If we wish to be treated equitably
we must recall the precepts: If you want equity, you must
do equity; If you yourself want justice, you must come to
ask for it with clean hands.
The avant-garde cry for liberalization of our laws has nothing
in common with this. It is a growling demand for removal of
supposed "shackles", and it is a demand that is made under
protection of the law it derides.
Crime and violence defile human dignity. People who try
to make us believe that no change for the better can come
about without blood and fire and illegal tumult of all kinds
are profoundly ignorant of the meaning of our democracy. Democracy
cannot survive if society chooses to be apathetic to lawlessness
and disorder. Such neglect can lead only to anarchy.
George Bernard Shaw defined anarchy as "a state of things
in which a man is free to do what he likes with his own: break
your head with his own stick, for instance." Anarchy is a
disavowal of law and government, a brutish life which would
destroy the cohesive material that holds a society together
and gives it stability.
The need for law
Criminal laws are imposed laws. They come into being because
some people are not what they should be, and the purpose of
the law is to compel them by force and fear to behave. Crime
does not affect the victim and the guilty only; it affects
all in the community.
As John Locke said in Two Treatises of Government:
"And thus every man by consenting with others to make one
body politick, under one government, puts himself under an
obligation to every one of that society, to submit to the
determination of the majority." It would be no compact, said
Locke, "if he be left free and under no other ties than he
was before in the state of nature."
This view of government, law, and the pursuit of good makes
it evident that young people, with their ardour and energy,
should be first in the effort to restore and maintain law
and order in today's world which will be their world tomorrow.
How else than in an ordered environment, maintaining a compact
one with another, can they hope to realize themselves?
What law is
Law is not an invention of the strong to chain and rule
the weak, nor is it an invention of the weak to limit and
hold back the strong. It has two objects: to define and restrain
wrongdoing, and to guide the simple.
Ideally, law would be a self-imposed discipline, made by
man himself to govern his own conduct and his relationships
with his fellow citizens. Morality implies not only good outward
action but a sense of obligation to self — Confucius
said: "The moral man can find himself in no situation in life
in which he is not master of himself."
The difficulty of our day does not stem from technological
things. They are neutral, and cannot be blamed. Her Majesty
the Queen put it well in one of her Christmas Day broadcasts:
"The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly
throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and worn out
machinery. They would have religion thrown aside, morality
in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted
as foolishness, and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint."
Most people in Canada have within them the essence of goodness.
They detest criminal actions. It was the search for human
dignity and the opportunity to" live in peace that brought
millions of people to this country during the past three hundred
years.
In this search we need a built-in internalized governor,
giving us wisdom and understanding to choose what is good.
Then virtue becomes a habit.
To guide those who are unfortunately lacking in this positive
morality, and to protect society and our freedoms, we have
developed over the centuries a system of rules. These rules,
the outgrowth of man's experience with life, respect the right
of men and women to live their lives as they desire, provided
they do not trespass on the rights of others.
The Criminal Code of Canada is not a book of rules compiled
by kill-joys. It is a conspectus of things that should not
be done, written into law by the people of Canada through
their elected representatives, and printed for all to see.
It puts into words our rights, duties, obligations, privileges
and fundamental freedoms.
Administering the law
The enforcement of law is in the hands of the police appointed
and trained and paid by the people, and its administration
is in the hands of magistrates and judges of integrity. The
essentials of our rule of law are these: independent judges;
representative juries; freedom from arbitrary imprisonment;
definition of offences so that they are clearly understood;
humane and definite penalties; open trials; right of appeal
to higher courts.
When an accused comes to trial he is an innocent man until
he is proved guilty. The chief duty of the magistrate or judge
is to see that the accused has a fair trial. He is not there
to grant justice as a favour, but to get at the truth.
When the verdict is "guilty", punishment is not founded
on vengeance. Society punishes the offender in order to make
certain that his offence may be considered abhorrent to the
minds of men. Punishment may seem brutal, but it is necessary
to discourage deviational conduct which imperils the liberty
and happiness of other people. Under enlightened administration
it can be made reformative, so as to train the individual
to become a useful member of society.
Some will say that the first duty of society is to its fallen
members, and not to its wronged and injured people. Addressing
the American Bar Association in 1966, George B. McClellan,
then Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said
this: "The pendulum has swung away over to one side, and the
major emphasis today is on the protection of the accused and
the rehabilitation of the criminal.
"There can be no quarrel with such objectives, but there
are a great many senior police officers who are firmly convinced
that the scales of justice are beginning to sag far too much
on that side, and that the weight is being taken off what
police officers consider the fundamental objective of law
enforcement — that is, the right of society to be protected
from society's enemies. There are many of us who believe that
that basic right is being chipped at, chiselled away and eroded."
Any consideration of prevention of crime must be directly
concerned with the moral structure of society. No matter how
appealing a theory may be, the fact remains that if there
is no social or moral force behind efforts to keep criminals
from doing wrong, social order cannot be preserved. We must
not put illusory fears about the impairment of liberty ahead
of the promotion of justice.
The part police play
The police, whether dressed in scarlet, blue or khaki, are
the force standing between the citizens of Canada and the
anarchy of crime. They do not make the laws, but enforce them.
Their effort is to maintain decency and order.
There are four kinds of police forces in Canada: the Federal
police, the Provincial police, the Municipal police, and others
such as company police. The full-time personnel of all these
at the beginning of 1968 totalled 42,541.
As shareholders in the business of law enforcement, the
public have given these policemen a mandate to enforce the
laws of the land. We expect them to be zealous in protecting
the rights of everyone. We ask them to subscribe to an oath
of office which follows these lines: "I will well and truly
serve ... without favour or affection, malice or ill
will, and I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace
to be kept and preserved."
Police are the most closely supervised of all public servants.
They are responsible to their immediate superiors, to Crown
counsel, to the courts, and to governments at all levels elected
by the people.
If Canada merits the distinction often bestowed upon her
by the people of other lands of being among the most law-abiding
countries in the world, a big share of the credit must go
to the North West Mounted Police and their successors the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. No longer the legendary horsemen
of the western plains, the police are fully modern in their
methods and equipment, with jurisdiction extending in one
form or another from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from
the North Pole to the border of the United States.
The R.C.M.P. Force is primarily charged with the enforcement
of all Federal statutes anywhere in Canada, but by special
arrangement it acts as Provincial Police in several provinces
and it polices more than a hundred towns and villages. It
has an air division, with more than twenty airplanes, and
a marine division with 37 ships. Its finger-print section,
one of the oldest in the world, was started in 1910. The Force
is headed by a Commissioner who reports to a Minister of the
Crown, an elected member of Parliament who is a member of
the Cabinet.
Crime prospers when there is lack of co-operation among
those who are battling against it, and the R.C.M.P. has taken
long steps toward the co-ordination of police efforts in Canada
without infringing the prerogatives of municipal and provincial
forces. Its Police Information Centre has introduced the new
electronic era in law enforcement, linking coast to coast
by teletype and wirephoto. This service is available to provincial
and municipal police in Canada, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation
in Washington, and to INTERPOL, the International Criminal
Police Organization. The R.C.M.P. senior training course offers
advanced instruction in investigational methods to its own
people, to members of police forces throughout Canada, and
to those of many other countries.
There are, of course, improvements always being made in
the country's police forces. Employment practices, promotional
policies, training, salaries, and other things which have
for some years exercised private businesses, need attention.
Law and order and respect for lawful authority can survive
only if those responsible for its maintenance enjoy personal
security, a firm base upon which to erect the fierce pride
that is needed in the profession of law enforcement.
Communication of all this to the public is urgently needed.
The police have been among the last to realize that explanation
of methods and public understanding of purposes are important.
A policeman's qualities
The policeman is a citizen acting on behalf of his fellow
citizens. He has been put into uniform to enforce the laws
that have been passed by legislators elected by the people.
He does his duty as wisely, justly, bravely and temperately
as possible, setting an example of tolerance, patience, tact
and respect.
Some persons talk disparagingly about "the livery of the
law", but in human affairs it has always been found practical
to have outward signs of inward grace. The robes of our judges
and the uniforms of the police speak of a continuity of development
of responsibility. They clothe the individual with the corporate
authority of the law. They remind him that he is not an isolated
individual acting for himself alone, that his task is not
a mere matter of whim or fancy, but is one which is weighty
with centuries of experience.
There is something mean-spirited about people who attack
the peacekeeping force with words, sticks, stones and bombs,
and then cry "police brutality" when the police take action.
They are like sailors abusing the helmsman, upon whom they
depend for safe arrival in harbour, or a patient berating
the physician upon whose knowledge and skill his health depends.
The Criminal Code of Canada provides that "every peace officer
is justified in using or in ordering the use of as much force
as he believes, in good faith and on reasonable and probable
grounds, (a) is necessary to suppress a riot, and (b) is not
excessive, having regard to the danger to be apprehended from
the continuance of the riot." And what is a riot? Section
65 of the Code makes it clear: "A riot is an unlawful assembly
that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously."
The ruling in Section 70 is peremptory, leaving the policeman
no choice: "A peace officer who receives notice that there
is a riot within his jurisdiction and, without reasonable
excuse, fails to take all reasonable steps to suppress the
riot is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment
for two years."
The amount of force used by the police to make an arrest
or prevent the performance of a criminal act is limited by
the law. Section 26 of the Code reads like this: "Every one
who is authorized by law to use force is criminally responsible
for any excess thereof according to the nature and quality
of the act that constitutes the excess."
An interesting and useful book called Law and Order
in Canadian Democracy was issued by the R.C.M.P. in 1949.
It is available to the public through the Queen's Printer
for $1.30. In it is said: "One of the most onerous and perhaps
thankless duties the policeman has to perform is the maintenance
of peace and order during public disturbances, riots and unlawful
assemblies.
"At such times large masses of the public, convinced that
they have a grievance against another faction, sometimes try
to take the law into their own hands, whereupon the essential
tranquillity of society is disturbed, violence breaks out,
and injury to person and damage to property follow.
"The police are not concerned with the issues involved,
with which side is right or wrong. Nevertheless, their presence
on the scene is often the signal for abusive attacks from
one or both sides, who, through ignorance or contempt of the
law, ignore the fact that it is the duty of the police to
preserve law and order. Quite often those who complain the
loudest about police interference during such times of stress
are the most demanding when protection is needed for their
own person and property."
Public co-operation
A police officer's efficiency is in direct proportion to
the co-operation and assistance he gets from the public.
Active involvement in law enforcement is a civic duty. Upon
every citizen there rests a responsibility for maintaining
the peace, even to the extent that he is empowered under the
law to "arrest without warrant a person whom he finds committing
an indictable offence."
Two hundred years ago Edmund Burke warned: "The only thing
necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,"
and Benjamin Franklin went a step further: "Wrong none by
doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty."
It is not the policeman's responsibility in the maintenance
of law and the public peace to substitute for the family.
Respect for law, said Commissioner McClellan, begins with
respect for parents. It is nurtured by the learning of respect
for the rights and privacy of brothers and sisters and of
playmates. Such respect does not grow by itself. It is nourished,
cultivated and pruned.
Robert Paul Smith said succinctly in Where Did You Go?
"The reason these kids are getting into trouble with
cops is because cops are the first people they meet who say,
and mean it, 'You can't do that'."
The children need limitations and discipline as greatly
as they need opportunity and privileges. They are entering
upon a world which is under constant threat, and they need
ideas and principles to which they can cling with a feeling
of security.
Civilization on trial
We have for many years moved with a brash confidence that
man has achieved a position of independence which rendered
the ancient restraints needless, but our confidence has been
shaken by the uncivilized practices of many people.
The precepts of the law stand as the only anchor in a shifting
sea: to live honourably, to injure no other man, to render
to every man his due. This is a way of life in which men may
live together, if not in mutual helpfulness, at least in mutual
tolerance and freedom from fear of one another.
The only sound principle on which to base a bright future
is the co-operation of all citizens in the firm application
of the law. There is no middle ground. A reluctance to get
involved, or just plain apathy, puts a citizen on the side
of crime and against law and order just as surely as if he
supplied the "get away" car.
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