It is largely a liberal fantasy that the police exist to protect us from the bad guys. As the veteran police scholar David Bayley argues, The police do not prevent crime. This is one of the best kept secrets of modern life. Experts know it, the police know it, but the public does not know it. Yet the police pretend that they are society’s best defense against crime and continually argue that if they are given more resources, especially personnel, they will be able to protect communities against crime. This is a myth.1 Bayley goes on to point out that there is no correlation between the number
...more
