Whos the better police force, english police or american police?

Having lived in the U.K. for a year and taken a years worth of Criminal Justice classes at Cardiff, but being an American, and trying to be an American police officer, I think it's really hard to compare them because they fulfill different roles and work with different kinds of people.

Right off the bat, becoming an American police officers is a lot harder. When I lived and went to school in Cardiff, I knew a couple of people who were trying out for forces all over the U.K. and showed me their application packets and described the process, and when I told them the process about becoming an American police officer they were appalled. The background checks here are A LOT more exstensive, as is the application process, and many of the Physical agility tests. However, as the police forces in the U.S. are run by individual cities and counties, I can't speak for everyone specifically.

Also, the job of American police officers is on average harder and more dangerous than that of English police officers. The violent crime rate of the U.K. is drastically lower than that of America, and as it is illegal to own handguns in the U.K. it's on average, one less thing the English forces have to be constantly worried about. While of course some English citizens do have illegal handguns and higher rates of knife crime, and officers do get shot and stabbed, it's rarer than what U.S. cops face as a whole.

Also, the cultural standards are different. After the Stephen Lawrence debacle/McPherson report, institutional racism really started to come to the forefront, and they did that BBC special " The Undercover Policeman" where this reporter pretended to be a police cadet and exposed all this super racist stuff police cadets and instructors were saying. After the media got ahold of it, a few of the officers got reprimanded, but that was all. Here, while plenty of police officers/ police departments are racist, you have to be a whole lot subtler about it. If something like that gets exposed, everyone gets fired, and you can sue ( yes we Americans sue everyone) the entire police department. Also we have a much much higher rate of minorities working on the police force than English departments, So we try to be extremely careful about anything considered racist if only to cover our asses.

Overall, the two forces are like apples and oranges, they have to deal with different things, so it's hard to say who's better. However, I think you can make the arguement that the American police force is harder to get a job with, more dangerous, and more ethnically diverse.

Don't think that we in the UK understand how the US police force works, OK in the UK the police are not routinely armed and the whole of the UK police force has the same rules, it seems in American everyone whose stopped st treated like a potential criminal cos weapons are so freely available though we are hearing of many incidents where US police are way OTT, in the UK the police go on many training courses on how to deal with the public seems like in America this is not happening correctly or at all - just an observation...

The English police.

In America every police officer who pulls somebody over acts like you are transporting anthrax, or tar heroin in your trunk. When I was in high school we had a police officer stationed in our school. He would walk around with this holster unsnapped (everyday), like he expected Hamas to kick in the doors and open up on the students at any moment.

Police here think the hand gun (and the Taser) is an extension of there hand, and that it needs to come up whenever they raise there arm. This may be because our police departments are staffed largly by ex-military, and the over-zealous. When you look at the numbers for police shooting unarmed and innocent people, you wonder why they even issue weapons.

Not only that, but there is a sheriff's deputy who walks around the local mall in FULL tactical gear (I couldn't make this up if I tried). He has front, back and side Kevlar plates, a foot-long knife, one of those Camelbag things, and a holster that even a Delta Force operator would feel over the top wearing. He sits in the food court and reads "Guns and Ammo" magazine, and circles things (I assume equipment he wants).

To summarize; American police hide behind their guns, instead of do police work, so any other country that hasn't had 11 fatal deaths in Prince Georges County, Maryland in 2008 alone is miles ahead.

It's tough to make a comparison if you've only heard about one force and have actual experience with the other. And as another person has already said, in the U.S., there really is no "American police force." There's state, county, city, and all the specialized departments in between.

That said, I'm going to say that I feel safe in America with the police we have here. And if I ever get rich enough to travel to England, I hope to feel as safe with the English policemen you have there.

side-note: When I'm rich enough to travel overseas, Australia is going to be my first destination, so hopefully, they've got a great police force, too.

The American police seems to have gone power-mad with authority where-as the English police work together and solve the crime then imprison the criminal.

However I doubt they can be far apart on a scale.

Adam.

We have got it much better here in Australia though got some cops who get power trips though generally it's alright / the women cops are alright though they have been staying next to the bloke cops in long periods of time and sometimes seem to forget that they are females

English Police every time

British!

no comparison the Scots police force is by leaps and bounds ahead of the yanks

Sounds like you are trying to start a fight, you have NO clue about the English PD. Just trying to put us down because YOU got a ticket. Pay your fine and move on.