Organization
Section 1 of the Act established a Police Office for the Metropolis, to be under two commissioners who were to be Justices of the Peace.
Section 4, constituted the Metropolitan Police District from the Liberty of Westminster and parts of the counties of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent, and stated that "a sufficient number of fit and able men shall from time to time, by the direction of His Majesty's Secretaries of State, be appointed as a Police Force for the whole of such district..." The constables were to have power not only within the MPD, but also throughout Middlesex, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent.
Section 6 made it an offence for the owner of a public house to harbour a police officer during his hours of duty.
Section 7 outlined the powers of the new police force. A constable was empowered to apprehend "all loose, idle and disorderly Persons whom he shall find disturbing the public Peace, or whom he shall have just Cause to suspect of any evil Designs, and all Persons whom he shall find between sunset and the Hour of Eight in the Forenoon lying in any Highway, Yard, or other Place, or loitering therein, and not giving a satisfactory Account of themselves...
Section 8 made it an offence to assault or resist a police officer, with the penalty of a fine not exceeding five pounds.
Other sections dealt with arrangements for the handing over of police powers in the various parishes, with existing "watchmen and night police" to continue until the commissioners indicated that the Metropolitan Police were ready to assume responsibility for the area. Overseers in the parishes were to levy a Police Rate on all persons liable to pay the Poor Rate, not to exceed eight pence in the pound.
Section 34 of the Act allowed other parishes to be added to the Metropolitan Police District by Order in Council. Any place in Middlesex, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Essex or Kent within twelve miles of Charing Cross could be added.
Read more about this topic: Metropolitan Police Act 1829
Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“... every woman’s organization recognizes that reformers are far more common than feminists, that the passion to look after your fellow man, and especially woman, to do good to her in your way is far more common than the desire to put into every one’s hand the power to look after themselves.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)
“The organization controlling the material equipment of our everyday life is such that what in itself would enable us to construct it richly plunges us instead into a poverty of abundance, making alienation all the more intolerable as each convenience promises liberation and turns out to be only one more burden. We are condemned to slavery to the means of liberation.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“I would wish that the women of our country could embrace ... [the responsibilities] of citizenship as peculiarly their own. If they could apply their higher sense of service and responsibility, their freshness of enthusiasm, their capacity for organization to this problem, it would become, as it should become, an issue of profound patriotism. The whole plane of political life would be lifted.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)