Police Flashcards
Requirement of a ‘force publique’ to guarantee rights
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 1789
Established or defined police powers and obligations in municipal and judicial domains
Article 3 of Title XI of Decree of August 16-24 1790 Refined in the Code des délits et des peines, 1795
1799 Master of imperial police with a network of spies and informants
Fouché
Prefecture of Paris Police established
1800
Established prefectoral supervision of local policing, appointement of CP made obligatory in towns with more than 5000 inhabitants
Law of 17 Feb 1800
July monarchy police expansion
at least 28 new towns of under 5000 given CPs
Origins of commissaires spéciaux
official concern of dangers believed inherent in ‘nomadic’ workers employed to build French railroads e.g. in Tours and Poitiers
Maréchaussée numbers on eve of Revolution
3660 on eve of Revolution
Paris introduced CP uniform
1829
CP complained agent ignorant and incapable, no help at all to judiciary
Roubaix
Agents in Nantes, 1847
uniformed corps of sergents-de-ville, 50 strong, divided into brigadiers and sous-brigadiers
Mouchard provided CP with useful info on forthcoming election of officers in the municipal national guard
Chalon 1840
Gendarmerie in early years of Third Republic
Had to enforce anticlerical legislation and lost traditional support and praise from conservatives
Thrilling memoirs released esp after this date
1880
Detectives = ‘elite’, for little pay, never queried ‘dangerous missions’
Goron, former head of the Paris Sûreté
Publicly acknowledged debt to Sherlock Holmes. Urged readers and students to recognise, as Holmes had shown, that every contact an offender made with an object left a trace
Locard, 1st head of Laboratoire de police criminelle
Hoped uniforms would discourage officers from frequenting taverns and openly engaging in ‘bad habits’
Prefect of police Debelleyme
French policemen legally defined as representing the state as enforcer of the law
Law of 1790 Section on criminal procedures of Napoleon’s 1808 Penal Code French police manuals and service regulations of late 19th C and early 20th C
1887 regulations for Paris police
6 missions: 1. Crime prevention 2 Apprehension of criminals 3. Law enforcement 4. Protection of citizens, persons and property 5. maintain of public order 6. defence of public security and decency
Gendarmes out of uniform not considered as undertaking police functions
1805 Cour de Cassation
Number of CPs and quartiers in Napoleonic Paris
48
1st administrator of Bureau de Sûreté (2nd division of the Prefecture, dealing w crime)
Monsieur Henry
Vidocq appointed
1812
Size of Vidocq’s squad 1820s
grown to 28
Vidocq’s first resignation
1827
Vidocq’s return
1832, as chief of what was, since Sept 1830 prefectoral order, was officially the brigade du Sûreté
Vidocq’s 2nd resignation
agents accused of acting as provocateurs during sensational case of attempted robbery heard at the assize court of the Seine, end of September 1832
Gisquet’s reorganised Sûreté
Appointed capable officier de paix Allard as new chief. Brought funding of bureau under municipal budget. Forbade recruitment of men with criminal records
Paris police arrested over 17 000 vagrants
1892
Lawrence, conclusions from memoirs, autobiographies, policing manuals used to examine attitudes to poor
Measure of understanding, possibly because many police recruits drawn from the poor Great antipathy towards vagrants and beggars, possibly because of lack of alternative welfare infrastructure, which meant problem largely theirs Contrary to majority of people, many officers did see a relationship between socio-economic circumstances and crime Common for memoirs to stress the corrupting influecne of vice, e.g. alcohol, gambling Many blamed poor’s environment, slum life Vagrancy mentioned in almost every memoir
Num of different classes of CP/ different levels of annual salary
6
Complaint by minister of interior 1843
Great number of CPs simply left posts without authorisation to go back to Paris to ask ministry for advancement or something else
Better policing only if post made more attractive through increase of salaries
Suggestion of some prefects
Accepted appointment to Senlis in 1829 then visited new post incognito. Discovered miserable salary not to be supplemented by municipal funds. Left town
Dussochet-Renclos
‘One becomes a policeman when one can’t do anything else’
Aubert et al
Left much less scope for policeman to define terms under which people could be legally detained, arrested, subjected to physical force
Late 19th Century manuals and instruction
Merriman on professionalisation
- Differences in policing across the country decrease
- Must be seen in context of that of other notable occupations e.g. doctors
- Brought standardised training/ assessment of professional competency
- More references to ‘the profession’
- More CPs taking up posts away from place of origin
- Local reports on CPs asking for level of education and foreign language spoken
- Increased bureaucratisation - detailed reports to ministry of interior
- Appearance of instruction manuals and increased use of police stationary
- Increased number of Commissaires Centrals
- Bertillon Fingerprinting
- Num of gendarmes incr fourfold
- 1815-51 expansion of urban policing - more CPs
1854 reforms
established principle of civilian police force
Journal de commissaires de police established
1855
Policemen in Paris with their numbers on their collars
1855
Standards of recruitment and competitive exams instituted
Third Republic
Competence of CPs within judiciary
1791
Instructed CPs to send proces-verbaux of crimes and misdemeanours to procureurs
Code d’instruction criminelle
CPs authorised to search 4 criminals, gain proof and deliver this to courts Power to arrest, interrogate, release subjects for misdeeds, punishable by fine of up to 3 days’ wages or 3 days in jail
Article 8, Criminal Code 1817 circular confirmed responsibilities
1829 Paris CP Baille’s office stocked with
- four volume Dictionnaire de police moderne
- 8 boxes of copies of laws, ordinances, regulations
CP serving in his local area is subject to local considerations, can’t always resist influences
Prefect of Manche
local CP serving in a rival local town could be a problem
e.g. Aurillac to Rodez
Rivalry between Commissare Central and CPs below him led to suppression of the former post
Vannes
Lack of change in CP agenda/ function
Basic modus operandi remained the same:
- Patrolled beats on foot - scarecrows for petty thieves
- Knowledge of offenders (Emsley)
Change in target audience of manuals
1st half of 19th C manuals for managerial level
1880s/90s increasingly for rank-and-file
Johansen on professionalisation
Turn of 20th C establishment of police academies and printing of service regulations
Sûreté prestige contrast to Paris police as a whole (Emsley)
Du Camp - inspectors chosen with care from among army NCOs. Mainly married, good morals, rectitude to underworld temptations
Reform resulting from wave of concern about crime - street thugs (apaches), bandits and vagabonds
Reorganisation of Police speciale into a dozen mobile brigades of 13-18 men in major cities
1852 reforms
More centralised (Paine)
Bourgoin lost CP to military service
council suggested could get along without one. Mayor and subprefect argued needed CP because Bourgoin too exposed to numerous and frequent comings and goings
Retained police by virtue of its location and major market
La Charité
Departmental prefect authorised to nominate police on recommendation of the mayor
1864
Mayor = nominal chief of police
- Ambiguity - superior authority in some circumstances to prefects and sub-prefects (Emsley)
Structure and functions of gendarmerie
Brigades of 6 men stationed in barracks in towns and villages along main road Brought in conscripts, protected taxes and ammo convoys etc
Pélot
arson attack on Gascon neighbour
Thereafter violent attacks on houses and rape
April 1816 - shoot out with gendarmes.
Died in prison from the wounds
40 years later Gascony had transformed Pélot into mythical hero resisting state encroachments
So much so that functionary in one of the courts in Tarbes thought it important enough to publish a short history to counter incorrect versions that made Pélot a ‘noble soul’
Growth rate of Gendarmerie levelled off
1880
Current numbers of gendarmes and CPs
80 000 gendarmes 108 000 Police nationale (Gillis)
Insist strongly on respect for hierarchical order
1880-1914 police manuals
Change in CP appointment procedure
1st half of 19th C, CPs appointed by minister of the interior from list of local worthies. Selected primarily based on political loyalty
By 1900, Commissaires developing into professional body with growing sense of professional identity
Establishment of commissaires speciaux de surveillance des chemins de fer
1846
Commissaires speciaux by 1860
33 of them with 70 subordinate inspectors
1889 restructuring of commissaires speciaux
divided into police speciale de la frontiere and police speciale de l’interieure
Police speciale = essentially political policemen
Agent of Bourg St Andéol
seemed oblivious to the tricks of the unscrupulous e.g. merchants weighing using old measures
Boats on the Rhône loaded and unloaded passengers without the slightest police survelliance
In town, shouts and obscene songs echoed
Agent dismissed 1820s
Only in 1836 did Bourg St Andéol finally get a CP and then only because the prefect forced the municipal council to allocate funds for his salary (Merriman)
Feb 1824, Gendarmerie brigade in Figeac heard a rumour of an attempted murder in the small community of Fourmagnac…
Subsequent investigation by gendarmes revealed that an elder brother had stabbed a sibling over the inheritance of family mill and the younger brother’s affair with a servant
Local mayor had played a significant role in the cover-up
Number of political dossiers and individual bulletins accumulated during the July Monarchy
25 000 political dossiers 60 000 individual bulletins
Number of registers accumulated 1790-1871
10 million
Crowds turned against police
February Revolution 1848
Paris prefect pointed out advantage of police neutrality for public relations
September 1832
Determined to improve quality of recruits, behaviour on the streets and hence public relations
Efforts conducted with much publicity and welcome degree of success
Praised by an increasingly professional cadre of commissaires
Lépine, appointed Prefect of police 1893
Praised Lépine’s efforts and acknowledged French police’s history of arbitrary authority, but insisted those days were in the past
Pélatant, commissaire central in Grenoble
Changes in background of those joining police
3rd Republic inherited large number of officers whose professional ethos and practices shaped by doing military careers and loyalty to Napoleon III 1880s/ 90s these men gradually replaced with recruits loyal to the Republic with little military experience
Recurrent topic in public debates 1890s-1914
Disproportionate violence of police, systematic beatings at police stations, etc
Turning point in attitude of many towards republican regime
1893 police behaviour in Paris riots
French manuals’ and instructions’ clear legal boundaries around police action
Several substantial paragraphs, entitled e.g. ‘Abuse of Authority’, ‘Arbitrary Acts, ‘Usurpation of police powers’
References to sections of the Penal Code that could be used to prosecute erring policemen:
- Article 114 - attack on civil liberties
- Article 184 - unlawful entry
- Article 186 - illegitimate use of force
Vautrin ft
Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes 1837-47 Master of disguise, e.g. appearing as Spanish priest Carlos Herrera
At end of novel, recruited as Police detective in Paris
Bras Rouge ft
Sue, Les Mysteres de Paris, 1842 Figure of underworld finally revealed as police detective
Brigandage and theft = metier. Lived with prostitutes, had rank, gutteral voices, looked different from members of respectable society
Rabasse, inspecteur in Paris Police, 1872
Cultivated image of police as scientific expert. Encouraged work of Bertillon and development of anthropometric files
Mace, head of Sûreté, 1879-1884
Led from the front, took charge of several major cases and won praise from the press for his successes Published novel after. Stressed use of scientific methods, but also courage, probity, vigour of police inspectors
Goron, head of Sûreté, 1887-1894
incorporated within bureau 1881
Brigade des moeurs, responsible for surveillance of prostitutes and suppression of vice
Could threaten/ victimise young w-c women
‘Since the Revolution of 1789, the vice squad has succeeded in perpetuating a spectacular legal anachronism, recreating the most tragic and scandalous affairs that were characteristic of the Old Regime’
Dr Fiaux, La Police des moeurs en France, 1888
Scandal of the vice squad: Mademoiselle Rousseil, 1876
Arrested on the pavement waiting while husband bought train tickets
When finally found her and complained, head of police, Lecour, replied - ‘what kind of man leaves his wife to wait for him on the pavement?’
Scandal of the vice squad: Mademoiselle Ligeron, 1877
Arrested for looking suspicious, forced to confess to prostitution. Med exam revealed she was a virgin
Scandal of the vice squad: Amélie Renault, 1877
inscribed prostitute, Renault was looking for meds for her sick child when she was arrested and held overnight. The child died
Scandal of the vice squad: Fourissier Affair, 1903
Sister and fiancée of young journalist walking to meet him, accused of prostitution. All three arrested. Vice squad tried to cover up
24 metre tent stolen from the Champs-Elysées
1803
1st time training system for Paris police
1860s
Prostitution system formalised
by the Cour de Cassation 1850
Obligations and prohibitions imposed on common women, 1887
- health check fortnightly
- no depravity during day
- simple/ modest clothing
- No talking to men with women/ children
Lots of police time spent…
policing the poor/ very poor
focus partly due to lack of police resources
date appointment of garde champêtre made obligatory (although many communes appear to have ignored it, unwilling to impose the tax to fund it)
following subsistence crisis 1795
Improvement of gardes champêtres
Criticisms such as susceptible to community opinion seem gradually to disappear from the monthly and annual reports of the Gendarmerie mid-19th Century
Example communal budget
St Martin
96 fr levy for garde champêtre
85 fr salary - 22% of total expenditure
until now rural police ‘neglected in most municipalities, poorly paid, often confided to corrupt hands’. Not been effective deterrent to theft and depredations. Necessary that honest salary place them beyond temptation
Convention’s agriculture committee, 1795
Prefect of Deux-Sèvres
Livestock sent to graze on the stubble trample through enclosed properties or orchards and the gardes champêtres do nothing about it
Limited hunting to own property
Rural Code 1791
‘They clamp down only on the unfortunate while the large cultivators can devastate the crops with impunity… They are obliged to spare the rich who give them employment’
Prefect of Côte d’Or
Annual salaries of Indre department’s 76 gardes champêtres
81 fr. Thus, the gardes champêtres were part timers
banned from carrying firearms
gardes champêtres, owing to their reputation for illegal hunting
Government authorised communal levies to pay guards’ salaries. Unique exception to iron constraints on local fiscal initiative
1805
gardes champêtres made informal auxiliaries of the Gendarmerie
1806
their isolation renders their service absolutely nil in respect to policing
Prefect of Somme, of gardes champêtres
Date by which salaries of gardes champêtres routine element of communal budgets
1820s
Without the ministry of police, how would one know the movements of society?
Police official 1814
Bonnot Gang
1911-2, better tech than police. Motorbikes etc.
corruption
Dossiers used for extortion. E.g. Daudet, 1920s, called the Sûreté Générale an ‘association of malfaiteurs’ and claimed ‘blackmail is thier most important function
trafficked in drugs and practiced extortion so openly that his cowed superiors recommended him for a promotion in 1934
Mariani, inspecteur in Lille
Merriman’s definition of professionalization
standardized training and assessment of professional
competency within the context of a hierarchical structure of
authority and a sense of collective identity
