Law enforcement should be left to the professionals.
The chief selling point for professional policing seems to be the idea that sworn government agents are more competent crime solvers than grand juries, private prosecutors, and unpaid volunteers. But this claim disintegrates when the realities of police personnel are considered. In 1998, for example, forty percent of graduating recruits of the Washington, D.C. police academy failed the comprehensive exam required for employment on the force and were described as "practically illiterate" and "borderline-retarded."
196 As a practical matter, police are more dependent upon the public than the public is dependent upon police.
197
Cops rely on the public for a very high percentage of their investigation clearances. As the rate of crimes committed by strangers increases, the rate of clearance by the police invariably declines.
198 Roughly two-thirds of major robbery and burglary arrests occur solely because a witness can identify the offender, the offender is caught at or near the crime scene, or the offender leaves evidence at the scene.
199 In contrast, where a suspect cannot be identified in such ways, odds are high that the crime will go unsolved.
200
Studies show that as government policing has taken over criminal investigations, the rates of clearance for murder investigations have actually gone down. For more than three decades — while police units have expanded greatly in size, power and jurisdiction — the gap between the number of homicides in the United States and the number of cases solved has widened by almost twenty percent.
201 Today, almost three in ten homicides go unsolved.
202
196 Tucker Carlson, Washington's Inept Police Force, WALL ST. J., Nov. 3, 1993, at A19.
197 See SILBERMAN, supra note 6, at 297. Silberman points out that New York City police solved only two percent of robbery cases in which a witness could not identify an offender or the offender was not captured at the scene. See id.
198 See id. at 296 (saying clearance rate dropped precipitously between 1960 and 1976 as proportion of crimes committed by strangers increased).
199 See id. (citing figures registered between 1960 and 1976).
200 See id. at 296.
296 Compare Howard v. Lyon, 1 Root 107 (Conn. 1787) (involving constable who obtained "escape warrant" to recapture an escaped prisoner and even had the warrant "renewed" in Rhode Island where prisoner fled), and Bromley v. Hutchins, 8 Vt. 68 (1836) (upholding damages against a deputy sheriff who arrested an escapee without warrant outside the deputy's jurisdiction), with United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411 (1976) (allowing warrantless arrest of most suspects in public so long as probable cause exists).
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http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm
