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Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

Apart from the US, what industrialised countries don't have a centralized national police force?

The French have their national Police and also 'Gendarmes' which are like police, but I think a branch of the Armed forces.

I'm not so sure of the history, but it's not so crazy that there are 'two' so long as roles are clear etc..

Nation states are funny things. They change slowly :)

One thing is for certain: there should be more control over who gets to be a 'cop' and the training and ultimate badge authority should be centralized at least at the state level.

This idea of 'Universities' hiring their own cops ... with authority to arrest ... who is in charge of them exactly?

I mean, in France they have 'two systems' but as far as I remember that covers everything and there are only 2 kinds of police uniforms that I ever saw. If there is one goofball cop/gendarme, his case will go pretty high up. Not to the 'dean' of the local college or whatever. Or to 'an elected guy' from some village.

Gendarmerie is indeed part of the military in France. You mainly see them in rural areas/villages while regular cops are found in urban areas. When national service was still compulsory, young people could even choose to do it as a gendarme.

University cops, assuming we are talking about those that are actual police departments, are authorized by their respective states to perform that duty. It operates similarly to any other police department, which means they have the rights and responsibilities of any other police officer. In my state, they are also required to have a public oversight committee with elected representatives, and I assume this is not uncommon in other states.

In most, and perhaps all, states, there are state-level commissions to handle cases of problem cops. However, I will be the first to admit that they don't always work as intended.

They do also have their own kangaroo courts that lack due process for some unexplained reason though: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

I'm not sure there's going to ever be a good happy ground on sexual assault cases that'll please everyone, just due to the nature of the crime. Ultimately a lot of the cases are going to boil down to a he said she said even with evidence that something actually happened. Given all that though there were definitely big issues with how cases were handled before though, as a reaction there's been perhaps an over correction.

Germany. The "regular" police is federalized to the state level. The former border force (Bundesgrenzschutz) is now called Bundespolizei but is still mostly border force, protects the federal government, the railways and air infrastructure. The Customs office (Zoll) is also a police on the federal level, responsible for customs (of course) but also federal taxes and illegal employment. Then there ist the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), which is the central criminal police but each state also has their own. We also have the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz) but they are the domestic secret service and of course every state has its own domestic secret service...

The municipalities have, depending on the state they are in, forces they call police or "police office" but they are for code enforcement, public health and security, etc.

There is also a military police (Feldjäger) but they don't play a role in day to day life.

We also have the "Polizei im Bundestag", which is the police force for parliament. (It has a good reason to be separate: it's not under control of the government, but of the president of parliament)

The German constitution set forth that law enforcement is a matter of the states; no federal "general purpose" police may exist. Secret agencies and police may not be mixed (although some commenters liken the excessive powers of the Bundeskriminalamt to a secret police), for obvious reasons. Many other western countries don't have that separation in the first place; e.g. the FBI is quite clearly a secret police.

Italy, for historical reasons, has two major and mostly overlapping police forces, plus another two specialized one:

* The "Carabinieri", a branch of the military which historically which mostly works against normal crime

* The "Polizia di Stato", which became a fully civil force in 1981 and often compete with the Carabinieri

* The smaller "Guardia di Finanza", which is another militarized force but at the direct dependence of the Ministry of Economy, and deal with financial crime and smuggling

Until last year, we also had the State Forestry Corp which was its own corp and was, against many many resistances, absorbed into the Carabinieri.

The Irish police force is centralised, and thankfully unarmed. They are generally oafs who have no insight or intelligence. You basically can only before uni/college, so no degree expected ever, and they are known for general uselessness and inaccuracy. This is basically the tip of the iceberg: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/10/head-of-irish-...

I'll agree that the Gardai have many problems but "generally oafs eho have no insight or intelligence" is very very unfair. I know a number of them personally and I would certainly not describe the average Garda like that.

Maybe I am being a bit harsh on them, but I can't say I've had a good experience with them or that they are good at projecting a positive image. Numerous times I had my house burgled or bicycle stolen and they were so damn listless about the whole affair, they literally took a out a ledger and wrote a description of the bicycle long hand. It's 2017 not 1917. They are stuck in the past and don't really seem to do their job to the level that is necessary. Their aversion to technology would be funny if they weren't a police force.

They also seem to have a big chip on their shoulder when it comes to law breakers, they take everything personally and in their indignation often do the paperwork wrong. I have a few stories that are shocking, but to protect parties I won't recall them here.

I think the barriers to people with skills joining the force and enriching it with fresh blood are what is preserving it's holier-than-thou attitude to technology and the future while cementing their dumb and archaic process.

I think they could learn a lot from the PSNI, they've being around less than 20 years and seem to be a far more effective and modern organisation.

The bar was pretty low to enter the Gardai https://i.redd.it/fmlp8q1dwiiz.jpg

We have to distinguish here between a single, centralised police force that handles all levels of policing across the country (which is what most commenters replying to your comment seem to be debunking), and having a single, centralised "federal police" force that handles most law enforcement for a single layer of government (which is what I suspect you're getting at).

The US is particularly unique in that even amongst countries with relatively decentralised law enforcement, I can't think of another country where most major government departments have their own internal police force ("why is the Department of Education buying shotguns") or so many "primary" federal law enforcement agencies (FBI/DEA/ATF, etc) which would normally be much more consolidated.

Portugal:

+ normal police (immediate events such as car accidents, small burglars)

+ legal police (white-collar events such as economic crimes, bribes, traficking)

+ military police (acting as normal police on remote/wide field regions)

+ townhall police (events such as stadium security, car tickets)

+ secret police (mostly to identify society risks before they become problems)

+ military (in case of war/calamity they replace have precedence on all above)

This decentralization works OK. When the agents investigating a specific crime are suspected to be corrupt, at some point you see another agency taking forward the investigation and exposing the dirt. A recent case was the investigation about the criminal fires going in Portugal last summer. The military police was suspected of closing their eyes on the incident where +60 people died and the legal police took the case away from them.

Australia, for one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_Australia

Poland has Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA) and Internal Security Agency (ABW). They both report to Prime Minister, while Police reports to Ministry of Interior and Administration).

India. Law and order is State responsibility. There are central agencies but they get involved only at state's request

Well, bit of egg in your face, pretty much all of them by the look of it.

The UK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_agenci...

Yes, the UK has regional policing. Up here in Scotland we recently restructured to a "national" force, which was supposed to offer efficiency savings but has not been popular with the public. Crime is slowly falling but I believe that's more due to social factors.

(I do think a lot of US police forces would benefit from a RUC -> PSNI style reconstruction)

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