The police are the public and the public are the police.

Campbell McBryer is a retired counter terrorism officer who served with Sussex police for 23 years.  He went to London today to pay respects at the funeral of PC Keith Palmer.

He said to the BBC: "I'm very proud, but it's very sad. I just sat and cried when I heard the news.  It's just ordinary men and women doing extraordinary things.  (The police) is one big family."

Special sergeant Matthew Warden, from Nottinghamshire, said he had made the journey "because we are all one big family".

Poignant sentiments, particularly as the Officer is laid to rest today.  But fundamentally flawed thinking exists behind them.  PC Palmer was not part of a police family.  There is no such thing according to Sir Robert Peel the founder of the modern police force in England in 1829.  

Known as the father of modern policing, slightly inaccurately as an Act of Parliament in 1800 enabled Glasgow to establish the City of Glasgow Police, (often described as the first professional police force in Britain), Peel did develop the nine Peelian Principles which define the ethical requirements police officers must follow to be effective.  They are taught these when the join the force.  Peel declared: “The police are the public and the public are the police”.    

This is a profound statement in which he stipulated that it was the duty of a police officer to maintain, at all times, a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police.   

All the police are, according to Peel, are “the only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence”.  

PC Palmer was part of the family that is our society, our communities.  He didn’t belong to the police.  He belonged to us all.  Because he was one of us.  

That many police officers of today appear not to recognise this, as was demonstrated sadly today with police officers lining the streets, not the public, they were kept back, undermines confidence we may have in them and showed all too starkly that they do believe they are a family.  A separate group in society.