As a follow up to this article on technology and policing, Vinay Gupta points us to this quote from the inventor of “kettling,” an anti-demonstration tactic heavily used at the G20 in London.
There is little doubt that the occupational self-image of the police is that of “crime-fighters” and that this is not just a distortion of what they do, it is virtually a collective delusion. A mountain of research has indicated that police have little impact on crime rates, are responsible for discovering few crimes and detecting few offenders, do not spend much duty-time on crime-related tasks and so forth (for a review of this literature see Morris and Heal, 1981).
