ABSTRACT
In an anarchic world, if you are strong enough, you take what you want, and the stronger you are, the more you can take. And of course the reverse of this also holds; the weaker you are, the less you will have, and the less you will keep. If you are strong enough, you can build your own army to ensure you remain the strongest and if you can’t, the weaker still you become. But many countries have evolved from this anarchic and imbalanced position. It can be argued that the essence of law in a modern democratic society is the protection of the weak. Laws are there to even out the power imbalance. Democracy is about making a pact, with one party saying to another, “Give me the power to make laws and I will make laws that ensure your safety. Give me the strength and you no longer need to be concerned about your weakness.” All sounds like a great deal… . Well, that is the theory … arguably!*
Taking this somewhat simplistic theoretical standpoint at its most basic level, and accepting that a democratic government uses its power to draw up laws to protect its citizens, then by extension, law enforcement officers are the instrument of that government’s power. The primary function of law enforcement becomes to protect the weak, on behalf of the government. No longer do individuals need to be concerned about their safety and keeping what belongs to them. No longer do citizens need to fight for what is theirs; they have law enforcement to do that for them. This would be ideal from a citizen’s perspective, except for two aspects. First, there are
still those out there who have not “signed up” to adhere to the laws and are still trying to take away what belongs to the citizens and with whom law enforcement is in a perpetual struggle, that is, the criminals. Second, having given law enforcement the power, the citizen is quite entitled to ask as to what safeguards are in place to ensure that the power is not abused to the detriment of the citizen. As the Roman satirist Juvenal asked, “Ed quis custodiet ipso custodes?” [“But who will guard the guards?”] Or asked in a more modern context, “Who protects citizens’ rights from being abused by the state?”
