Understanding “Peace Officer” vs. “Law Enforcement Officer”

I’ll pro­vide an analy­sis of this com­par­i­son by look­ing at the Illi­nois Com­piled Statutes, since Illi­nois is the State which I am most famil­iar. There are basi­cally 3 types of police in Illi­nois, State Police, sher­iffs, and munic­i­pal police. Not all police are “sworn”, and those who are sworn are not nec­es­sar­ily prop­erly sworn. In order for an oath to be bind­ing, it must be admin­is­tered by some­one autho­rized to admin­is­ter a bind­ing oath, that if vio­lated, car­ries a pun­ish­ment. This power to admin­is­ter oaths is found in the Oaths and Affir­ma­tions Act. Aside from a law­fully admin­is­tered oath, actual “offi­cers” are also required to be bonded, per the Offi­cial Bond Act. The only offi­cer sworn is the sheriff.

Are State Police law enforce­ment or peace offi­cers? Per the Illi­nois Com­piled Statutes:

(20 ILCS 2610/16) (from Ch. 121, par. 307.16)
    Sec. 16. State police­men shall enforce the pro­vi­sions of The Illi­nois Vehi­cle Code, approved Sep­tem­ber 29, 1969, as amended, and Arti­cle 9 of the “Illi­nois High­way Code” as amended; and shall patrol the pub­lic high­ways and rural dis­tricts to make arrests for vio­la­tions of the pro­vi­sions of such Acts. They are con­ser­va­tors of the peace and as such have all pow­ers pos­sessed by police­men in cities, and sher­iffs, except that they may exer­cise such pow­ers any­where in this State.

 Are munic­i­pal police law enforce­ment or peace offi­cers? Per the Illi­nois Com­piled Statutes:

(65 ILCS 5/11–1-2) (from Ch. 24, par. 11–1-2)
    Sec. 11–1-2. Duties and pow­ers of police offi­cers.
    (a) Police offi­cers in munic­i­pal­i­ties shall be con­ser­va­tors of the peace. They shall have the power (i) to arrest or cause to be arrested, with or with­out process, all per­sons who break the peace or are found vio­lat­ing any munic­i­pal ordi­nance or any crim­i­nal law of the State, (ii) to com­mit arrested per­sons for exam­i­na­tion, (iii) if nec­es­sary, to detain arrested per­sons in cus­tody over night or Sun­day in any safe place or until they can be brought before the proper court, and (iv) to exer­cise all other pow­ers as con­ser­va­tors of the peace pre­scribed by the cor­po­rate authorities.

And what about sheriffs?

(55 ILCS 5/3–6021) (from Ch. 34, par. 3–6021)
    Sec. 3–6021. Con­ser­va­tor of the peace. Each sher­iff shall be con­ser­va­tor of the peace in his or her county, and shall pre­vent crime and main­tain the safety and order of the cit­i­zens of that county; and may arrest offend­ers on view, and cause them to be brought before the proper court for trial or exam­i­na­tion.
(Source: P.A. 89–404, eff. 8–20-95; 90–593, eff. 6–19-98.)

We see the phrase, “con­ser­va­tor of the peace” used for all types of offi­cer, but are they really all “offi­cers”. There are pub­lic offi­cers, who are required to take an oath and post a bond, and there are employ­ees who are called offi­cers. The only per­son actu­ally clas­si­fied as an “offi­cer”, is the sher­iff, who is elected or appointed and then com­mis­sioned by the Gov­er­nor. There is no oath or bond required for munic­i­pal police. They are hired by the mun­i­caplity to enforce the codes of the munic­i­pal­ity. “Con­ser­va­tor or the peace” is a plat­i­tude, but not their main func­tion. It is the enforce­ment of munic­i­pal ordi­nances which only extend to those belong­ing to the munic­i­pal­ity. I do a brief analy­sis of the nature of munic­i­pal­i­ties here.

 The orig­i­nal arti­cle follows:

Not long ago all law enforce­ment offi­cers were referred to as “Peace Offi­cers,” but a tran­si­tion has slowly set in, in which now all peace offi­cers have become known as “Law Enforce­ment Offi­cers.” Is this just seman­tics in title, or is there really a dif­fer­ence? That is the sub­ject of this addi­tion to my “Under­stand­ing” series “by Ron Bran­son” on var­i­ous items of pub­lic service.

To start out, we note that one title con­tains the word “Peace,” and the other “Enforce­ment.” Do these two titles denote the same thing, or is there a dif­fer­ence? Most any grade school grad­u­ate can under­stand them to be two dif­fer­ent things. But to the naked eye, one might argue that both wear a uni­form, have a badge, and carry a gun, and there­fore are one and the same.

The dis­tinc­tion is not one of appear­ance, but rather one of objec­tive. In all of soci­ety life is com­pe­ti­tion, and every­thing works from three basic posi­tions: “A” ver­sus “B” medi­ated by “C,” the lat­ter of which is a neu­tral posi­tion that may be called a medi­a­tor, an arbi­tra­tor, a ref­eree, an umpire, or a judge. Every­one in the com­pet­i­tive soci­ety of life is either a player, or a neu­tral par­tic­i­pant. While the com­pe­ti­tion of “A” and “B” could also include the com­pe­ti­tion of “D,” “E,” and “F,” there can be only one “C” who absolutely must have no inter­est in the out­come between A, B, D, E, and F. Once “C” man­i­fests an inter­est in the com­pe­ti­tion between A, B, D, E, and F, he auto­mat­i­cally for­feits his posi­tion as a neu­tral par­tic­i­pant, and becomes a player in the competition.

Every game of sport pro­vides an excel­lent illus­tra­tion of the game of life. No judge in an Olympian race can enter him­self into the race as a can­di­date. The moment he does, he for­feits his neu­tral posi­tion as judge because he now has an inter­est in the out­come.
This illus­trates why there can exist no such thing as a “gov­ern­ment inter­est” because the moment gov­ern­ment obtains an inter­est in the out­come, it ceases to be gov­ern­ment and becomes a con­tes­tant in the com­pet­i­tive world in which some­one else must nec­es­sar­ily step up to assume the role of “gov­ern­ment.”  “Gov­ern­ment” must absolutely be neu­tral, or it ceases to be government!

That is a pro­found state­ment I have just made because the courts in Amer­ica have rec­og­nized “an over­rid­ing gov­ern­men­tal inter­est,” U.S. v. Lee, 102 S. Ct. 1051 (1982), and Bowen v. Roy, 476 U.S. 693 (1986), both deal­ing with the manda­tory num­ber­ing of all Amer­i­cans to sup­port the Social Secu­rity Admin­is­tra­tion. How­ever, any true-thinking per­son can quickly see that by the very prin­ci­ples of nature itself, there can­not exist a “gov­ern­men­tal inter­est” at all, much less an “over­rid­ing” one. Once the exis­tence of such a prin­ci­ple is intro­duced, there can be no end, for it works like the camel’s nose under your tent; you will soon be sleep­ing with the camel, or worse yet, be crowded out totally from under the tent, for every­thing will even­tu­ally be done to accom­plish “an over­rid­ing gov­ern­men­tal interest!”

With this as a back­ground, let me explain the dis­tinc­tion between a “Peace Offi­cer,” and a “Law Enforce­ment Offi­cer.” The objec­tive of a peace offi­cer is peace, noth­ing more. He has no inter­est in the cause of A over B, but seeks only peace, which ben­e­fits A, B, D, E, and F. In fact, the whole pur­pose for all gov­ern­ment in soci­ety is jus­tice which results in peace. Peace is not pos­si­ble where there is no jus­tice. Said another way, where there is no jus­tice, there can be no peace; and where there is no peace, you can count on the fact that it is because there is no jus­tice. When a peace offi­cer arrives on the scene, his objec­tive is to sep­a­rate the dis­put­ing fac­tors and quell the ten­sion –whether it be a fight between a hus­band and wife, or feud­ing neigh­bors. He has no inher­ent inter­est in arrest­ing any­one upon arrival at the scene. Such pur­suit of peace is a reward­ing objec­tive. The Bible tells us, “Blessed are the peace­mak­ers.” Matt. 5:9.

So now let us dis­cuss a “Law Enforce­ment Offi­cer.” His inter­est, as his title indi­cates, is enforc­ing the law. Now we have already stated that the objec­tive of all gov­ern­ment must be the estab­lish­ment of peace through jus­tice. So the ques­tion now turns to whether law enforcement’s only  inter­est is seek­ing peace. I state emphat­i­cally, “NO!” Let me again illus­trate with a sports game – baseball.

Base­ball, as with all sports, has rules. The pur­pose of those rules, which we might here call “laws,” are made to assure that every­one plays on a level play­ing field and thus keeps the peace. One bat­ter can­not be granted five strikes while another is lim­ited to two. All rules must con­tribute to the objec­tive of obtain­ing peace between the com­pet­ing sides. Obvi­ously, if one side or the other can­not agree as to what the rules are, or to abide by them for the ben­e­fit of both sides, there can be no peace, i.e., no game can pos­si­bly be played. This nat­ural prin­ci­ple of law is true even where the oppo­nents are fight­ing in a ring. The objec­tive of all rules/laws must be peace!

Apply­ing this law of nature to all rules and all laws gov­ern­ing soci­ety, let us con­sider the inci­dents where the rule or the law’s objec­tive is not peace. We accept that the umpire is the decision-maker in base­ball; and both sides agree to honor his judg­ment, whether or not they agree with any par­tic­u­lar play. Con­cep­tu­ally, both sides agree that the umpire is try­ing to keep the peace by being hon­est and just in call­ing each and every play, and is not moti­vated by a per­sonal inter­est in the out­come, such as a bet on the game.

Now sup­pose the umpire, pur­suant to the author­ity and per­mis­sion of the Base­ball Com­mis­sion, imposes a fine against every player in the game for each strike in the amount of $10, (an “infrac­tion,”) and $100 (a “mis­de­meanor”) for each out, and finally $1000 (a “felony”) for each accu­mu­la­tion of 10 strikes. The “laws/rules” pro­vide that the Base­ball Com­mis­sion receives 90% of the pro­ceeds, and the umpire 10%. It is declared “per­fectly legal,” and such prac­tice “is endorsed by the courts” –see, here it is, point­ing to the pub­lished opin­ion of “United Base­ball Play­ers v. Base­ball Com­mis­sion, 666 U.S. 911, (2069).”  Now the enforce­ment of this rule/law is “enforce­able;” and the Com­mis­sion is within its right to pur­sue the play­ers for fail­ure to pay this fee/fine, and it is autho­rized to send forth law enforce­ment offi­cers with badges and guns to col­lect this fee or throw the play­ers in jail.

What has hap­pened is, while this enforce­ment is “per­fectly legal,” it has vio­lated the fun­da­men­tal laws of nature: that all laws must be for the pur­pose of bring­ing about peace through jus­tice. Impos­ing a fine upon the play­ers in a base­ball game is nei­ther a pur­suit of jus­tice nor peace, but rather the pur­suit of the Commission’s own inter­est –that of col­lect­ing fines. And since col­lect­ing fines is the Commission’s inter­est, it then fol­lows that their next step is max­i­miz­ing those fines, i.e, increas­ing the num­bers and amounts of the fines. There­fore, the “neu­tral” umpire, who has “no inter­est” in the out­come, starts “inter­pret­ing” more ques­tion­able calls in favor of strikes, the Base­ball Com­mis­sion­ers, and his own 10% com­mis­sion. Again I say, show me an umpire that has a “lit­tle bit” of inter­est in the out­come of a game, and I will show you a man that under any nat­ural stan­dard is dis­qual­i­fied as an umpire.

A “Law Enforce­ment Offi­cer” is con­tend­ing for the inter­est of those who hire him to “enforce” their “laws/rules” hav­ing noth­ing to do with peace or jus­tice, only with prof­its for those who have sent him. The objec­tive is greed-oriented.

The term “law enforce­ment offi­cer” con­no­tates the men­tal­ity of a fas­cist police state that has no inter­est in peace—just sheer obe­di­ence to the inter­ests of the author­ity that pays him, i.e., he gets a cut of the prof­its of tyranny. There is no dif­fer­ence in this sce­nario than a dri­ver of a get-away car receiv­ing part of the “prof­its” of a bank rob­bery when split­ting up the booty; except the for­mer is a “legal” heist, while the lat­ter an ille­gal one. The for­mer is accom­plished with an offi­cial uni­form and badge, while the lat­ter with a mask and bag.

By the very laws of nature, there can­not exist a “Law Enforce­ment Offi­cer,” for if such were true, then we could all make our­selves “law enforce­ment offi­cers,” for life itself must be a level play­ing field for all com­pet­i­tive inter­ests. Life is not sup­posed to be “gov­ern­ment.” It is sup­posed to be about soci­ety get­ting along peace­ably with each other as much as is pos­si­ble; and soci­ety needs only so much gov­ern­ment as is nec­es­sary to bring about that objec­tive, “Gov­ern­ment, even in its best state, is but a nec­es­sary evil; in its worst state, an intol­er­a­ble one.”

– Thomas Paine
So now we know why the for­eign power, under color of “gov­ern­ment,”  has pur­posely designed the exter­mi­na­tion of every ref­er­ence to “peace offi­cers” to meta­mor­phose them into “law enforce­ment offi­cers.” The objec­tive is designed to sub­ju­gate the Amer­i­can Peo­ple to obe­di­ence to an all-powerful, ever-expanding law enforce­ment police state. Accord­ing to the for­eign power, there can never be enough “law enforce­ment offi­cers” —the more, the bet­ter! And if there aren’t enough “laws” for these “law enforce­ment offi­cers” to enforce, do not worry because the for­eign power will surely pass more.
Only by judi­cial account­abil­ity to the Peo­ple through J.A.I.L. will their plans be thwarted!

Ron Bran­son is the author of a series of “Under­stand­ing” articles.

(It is highly rec­om­mended that this arti­cle be refor­mat­ted into a brochure and dis­trib­uted to all “law enforce­ment offi­cers” in Amer­ica. And all “L.E.O’s” are encour­aged to write for Offi­cer Jack McLamb’s newslet­ter, “Aid & Abet,” at Jack@cybrquest.com.)
J.A.I.L. (Judi­cial Account­abil­ity Ini­tia­tive Law) www.jail4judges.org