Earlier quoted context omitted.
So kindly explain what's wrong, in principle, with defining book ideals and then using these as criteria to evaluate the success of organizations? The Peelian principles have been largely obscured or ignored in recent decades, and arguably they were always a bit hollow -- but the history of British policing since the 1830s has had significantly less emphasis on raw offensive firepower than other police systems: even…
Indeed, I think there's something a bit too fatalistic about the idea that the police must automatically be bad because the very nature of authority is corrupting. It's somewhat similar to genetically-deterministic evo-psych, or arguments that group X will behave in a certain way because of their privileges or sufferings. There might be a tendency toward that pattern of behaviour, but tendencies can be overcome. In s…
Note that Peel's Principles were in no small part to address the public order aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_massacre
Prior to the huge wave of policing and justice reforms of the 1830s, in the UK not only were there no real organized police forces, but what policing there was relied on local bailiffs, freelance for-profit thief-takers (google "Jonathan Wilde" for an extraordinary example of just how wrong for-profit policing can go!), and in extremis, the army (who, at Peterloo, sent a cavalry charge into a large crowd who were demonstrating for electoral reform: many dead, many hundreds injured).
Some sort of reform was clearly necessary, and the drawbacks of a military style of public order enforcement was glaringly obvious: hence the attempt at re-inventing the entire concept of policing.