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Content: It also offers great temptations for abuse. Law
enforcement requires a delicate balancing act. The conflicts between liberty
and order receive their purest expression in considerations of democratic
policing. It is ironic that police
are both a major support and a major threat to a democratic society. When
police operate under the rule of law they may protect democracy by their
example of respect for the law and by suppressing crime. Police are moral,
as well as legal, actors. But apart from the rule of
law and public accountability, the police power to use force, engage in
summary punishment, use covert surveillance, and to stop, search and arrest
citizens, can be used to support dictatorial regimes and practices. When
non-democratic regimes are toppled a prominent demand is always for the
elimination of the secret police. The term "police state" as represented
by Germany under National Socialism and the former Soviet Union under communism
suggests the opposite of a democratic state. Police are subservient to
a single party, not a legislature or judiciary.