SmileCity New Zealand

OpED - The Role of Police

Police are more prone to go for an arrest when they have a probable cause to investigate and in the course of their investigation they are confronted by an offence, or evidence of an offence.

One hopes that in the majority of cases, where a criminal act has taken life or damaged lives, and the police have done their job right, guilty verdicts are more common, and those convicted of a crime go to jail. That way we believe works, and since we believe it works, we ought to do it right.

Society pays a huge amount to protect us from killers. We judge and imprison those we charge, but by enforcing violence against those the law seeks to exclude, society faces its own trial. Society must be good, and society must be effective to be any good. Therefore it is necessary for the police to be effective rather than formidable.

The mind of a person who is prepared to take other lives is not the life that is oppressed when the police become overly zealous in their persuit of solutions to crimes that can not be solved. It is every life. The police have an utterly significant role to play in the balance of things we call a moral society. When they do it right, evil may be thwarted from harming others.

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