Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 2, 2011

Prior to 1829, there were no police forces anywhere in the English-speaking world, at least as we understand them today. In that year, Robert Peel, England?s Home Secretary and the former English military governor of Ireland, introduced a bill to create the London Metropolitan Police.

British parliamentarian William Cobbett, an outspoken foe of what he called ?tax-eaters,? was among the fiercest critics of the Metropolitan Police, which he saw as the vanguard of a country-wide army of occupation.

?Tyranny always comes by slow degrees, and nothing could tend to illustrate that fact [better] than the history of police in this country,? Cobbett proclaimed.  He predicted that London would be overrun with ?Blue Locusts? ? ?a body of men ? as fit for domestic war as the redcoats were for foreign war.?

Peel?s model was exported to New York City in 1844. Other major cities ? New Orleans, Cincinnati, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago -- soon followed. All of those police forces were patterned after Peel?s military occupation force in Ireland.

Thus when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently boasted that in the NYPD he commands ?the seventh-largest army in the world,? he wasn?t speaking figuratively.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.