ABSTRACT
In a healthy society the public instinctively runs to help the police; the criminal is felt to be everybody’s enemy; there is an implicit brotherhood amongst peaceful citizens, who if attacked may confidently cry Help, help, or Stop thief. And the moral principle behind this ready cooperation is that no one ought to be a public enemy; that crime ought to be extirpated; and that the police, save for some involuntary error, is always right. It follows that the police cannot be too strong in respect to possible disorderly elements; it ought to be so obviously irresistible, and so supported by universal sentiment, that disorder should not dare to show its face, and that the very idea and possibility of rebellion to the law should be absent from the public mind.
