I once watched a video on YouTube called "Why America's (USA's) police look like soldiers."
It leads me to think where the concept of "the police" comes from. In African society, I can equate the police to the chief's/king's warriors who would patrol the land's borders & enforce the land's & king's law. So I can understand why some police are militarised... I believe that they were once upon a time, both the land's warriors who defended the land & enforcers of the law in precolonial Africa.
Europe introduced the concept of separate law enforcers & soldiers in a land when the warriors in precolonial Africa simply did both. The origin of the European police is written here. In Africa, I do not believe that the police should be a distinct & separate entity from the soldiers. I believe soldiers & police should be interchangeable. A policeman can be a soldier & a soldier can be a policeman. The only difference being uniform & certain job duties. I believe that both police & soldiers should;
1) be well-versed in the land's laws,
2) receive military level training
3) & be armed for combat
This could benefit the land in that it could bolster the national army's reserves as well as create an intergrated system with border police/patrol/guard & internal police of the land. Riot police should virtually be soldiers in my opinion because they are going into a conflict with aggressive & possibly armed mobs.
Personally, I don't see why the military & police should be separate entities to begin with. What makes us think that the police should be less equipped than soldiers in our societies? In South Africa, one of the most crime-ridden countries in the world, the police should be better trained than the SANDF. The police in South Africa should get so much training that it's seamless for them to be soldiers as well because of the level of crime in this land. Militarised police could ensure that the "war on crime" is met with actual war level force.
MY CONCEPT OF A POLICED STATE:
With more crime happening online, many first-world countries hire professional hackers in their military to defend against cyberattacks & infiltrate enemy technologies. I think hackers should be common in the police force as well. Ofcourse, some will complain of "privacy" but I think the concept of privacy should vanish when law enforcement, crime prevention & solving criminal cases is involved. Every camera in the land, including those owned by individuals, should be available to the police to solve or prevent a crime. Every device whether it be a smartphone, cellphone, PC, TV, radio or fridge should be open to be checked by the police. CCTV cameras should be commonplace in our land. Any crime seen by a law enforcer (police or soldier) should be liable to arrest regardless of whether a criminal case was opened or not. Once the law is enforced indiscriminately & without prejudice, people may start to respect & fear the police once again. They would once again be as the elite warriors & guards of the king's residence, not the odd crew that may or may not solve a crime. Hackers, snipers, technology specialists, armoured vehicles, fingerprint databases, assault rifles, locksmiths, pepper spray bombs, camera drones, water canons & even robots... all these should be the arsenal that the police have & if someone breaks the law, we must know that they will be fined, punished or arrested depending on the level of the crime. How many times have we heard of rapists getting bail & going to rape the same person again in South Africa? What is that? Crime is so low in Muslim countries because thieves get fingers chopped off & rapists get penises chopped off. You must solve the crime with it's level of brutality or people will just keep doing it. We can do better. The police must be as lethal as soldiers & as decisive as a leopard hunting prey. It is not acceptable that they have such little resources to hunt people down. Why can't the police use one of these simple Phone Finder apps to make an arrest? How are police prevented from using a simple Phone Finder app? They should be granted access to an individual's Google, Apple or Samsung account by law to find a device used by a criminal. The fact that South Africa's police do not have access to the RICA & FICA databases boggles my mind. In our position as a country, privacy should mean nothing when crime is so common. Social media accounts should be easily hacked by the police, this should be law already. The room for criminals to hide must become so small that it would be almost silly for people to break the law in real life or online. Our law enforcement needs an urgent revival.
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