To the average citizen the police are an essential service. If a burglar threatens our home we dial 000 and expect a fast response. A police station is a refuge where we can go for shelter and to seek help. Of course they are annoying when they run speed traps and issue fines for driving just over the legal limit and those booze buses have made many social outings hazardous - but deep in our hearts we accept that this is necessary for the common good.
The hardcore criminal elements have always been a threat to individual police but it was accepted wisdom that a murder of a policeman brought the full force of the law into play and the culprit would receive a draconian sentence. Consequently, using deadly force to murder a cop was out of the question - but now that has changed.
In America this " Black Lives Matter " issue has brought ambush tactics into play, resulting in black gunmen avenging deaths in custody by mowing down groups of white police officers. One of the problems seems to be the way policing is dispersed in the United States. Small towns and villages maintain what amounts to a local Sheriff and his deputies and most are voted into office at elections. Often these people lack any sort of qualification, beyond being thought a " good guy " and are expected to learn on the job. It seems inevitable that many will bring deep grained racist prejudice with them and the form of law and order delivered will hold to that attitude.
The religious war being waged by Islamic State specifically targets police. Here in Australia an aged accountant who worked at a police station was gunned down by a radicalised youth, who then met his own death from police guns. The Lindt siege shook the nation, and only now are we getting the unvarnished facts of unmet command responsibilities and lack of specialised equipment put into play. Alarmingly, the tactical snipers put in place and the other specialist police deployed have had their identities shielded by the use of code names. It is an offence to photograph them and they often have a cover over their face when on active duty.
Wearing a police uniform in Australia is fast becoming a high risk occupation. We are still a long way short of the military style of policing in use in America and across Europe, but what are essentially light tanks with machine guns are creeping into common use. As the risk ratchets up, expect the attitude of police on duty to harden. IS is encouraging radicalized youths to use their cars to run down officers and then ensure their death by beheading. Even a single event would be guaranteed to rate headlines across the entire country.
One of the dangers is this risk pushing policing out of sight and the emergence of a " secret police " to do the dangerous work of rooting out the people who threaten to deliver harm. The police in uniform take a more military presence and guard high risk locations such as airports and tourist areas while the secret police do their work out of sight.
It is easy to justify such a scenario, but we well remember the horror of the Gestapo which terrorised Europe during the second world war and the KGB which keep a Communist iron hand on the unfortunate countries which were liberated by the Red Army. Then there was the infamous East German Stasi which made life a misery behind the Berlin wall.
The pressure on policing is unforgiving - and it is being carefully orchestrated by IS to break down police morale as a divisive tactic. Uniformed police will certainly need to be cautious and make sure backup is always in place, but those blue uniforms are a guarantee that policing is legitimate. By the failures of past history, embracing secret policing would be a concept we would eventuall6y come to regret
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