Proposing two subkeys to detail police stations and other features:
Please discuss this proposal on its wiki talk page.
Why split in 2 pages?
The same problems in last post haven’t been solved Tagging police force details - #19 by Kovoschiz
At least OSM needs to think of the 3 different forces that exists in UK Special police - Wikipedia
police:branch= : Naming may be mistaken as a branch of office
=street_warden
Besides, there’s the whole topic of non-“police” law enforcement, that may or may not be argued to be suitable for police*=
Thank you for proposal. I think it is necessary to classify the police appropriately.
Classifying types of police might also help address the issue of potentially over-expanding the meaning of “amenity” key. This is because amenity=police is also added to police training facilities, so “education” key may be the appropriate.
For the type key, the “prefix:type1” “prefix:type2” “prefix:type3”… format may be less confusing. The “branch” key field is primarily used to enter the store name. The Japanese police have a mountain rescue team, and there are facilities where police officers are stationed for that purpose, so I would like this to be clarified.
in France there is this tag for what you suggest as police:branch: police:FR | Keys | OpenStreetMap Taginfo
In Italy we are hoping to be able to distinguish by operator amenity=police | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo Italy
Hi Dieter,
Yes, I explicitly mention police:FR in my proposal. The idea is to avoid needing country-based models as much as possible, because there is a wide overlap in the general structure, even if there are national differences.
The Italian example was also already discussed in the initial discussion thread, to which I replied:
classification via operator or operator:wikidata is perfect for adding more detail, but the aim here is to have a more generic tag. Using the operator tag requires disciplined mappers (hehe) that always write the exact same word, and it requires very local knowledge for international data users. The problem multiplies when you get to the local police organisations.
Classifying types of police might also help address the issue of potentially over-expanding the meaning of “amenity” key. This is because amenity=police is also added to police training facilities, so “education” key may be the appropriate.
This is already handled by the police=* tag
For the type key, the “prefix:type1” “prefix:type2” “prefix:type3”… format may be less confusing.
Since the proposal is to use police:branch & police:specialization, I’m not sure what you mean here
The Japanese police have a mountain rescue team
This could just be another value of police:specialization
there are facilities where police officers are stationed for that purpose
If these are not places where the general public goes to, a value of police=* could be used or introduced
Because the template seemed to be more apt for that
police:branch=: Naming may be mistaken as a branch of office
Do you have a suggestion for a better name?
=street_warden
Not a level of policing, but whether they are full-powered officers
It can exists in other levels, not only municipal.
Not limited to street or road traffic.
Yes, maybe I’m following the Belgian model too much. I was mainly trying to make the difference between “local police” (an actual police force, operated by municipalities in the wide sense) and “minor policing tasks by non-police officers” (which can be done by all sorts of actors, but here in BE are done by municipal level civil servants. Perhaps we can leave them out of this proposal completely, or keep this in the specialization subtag - since in the end the focus is most on the type of work (“livability infractions” and parking violations and such) rather than who exactly does the work.
There are strange situations where non-national police are directly responsible, or mostly operates some national policing functions
I fail to see how that matters for this proposal? For one, let’s not try to catch every edge case. Since the branch subtag is focused on the organization, not the task, they would get whatever fits from the non-national levels.
Besides, there’s the whole topic of non-“police” law enforcement, that may or may not be argued to be suitable for
police*=
Yes but we don’t need to solve everything at once.
if the same structures exist it makes sense to follow your approach of generic tags, but I think the issue already starts what to consider “police” and what not, for example in Germany, “Zoll” and “Ordnungsamt” are generally not considered “police” in Germany (I think), but their “counterparts” in Italy are, although there are no complete counterparts. In Italy, some tasks of the “Ordnungsamt” are done by Municipal police, like issueing parking fines, or getting wrongly parked vehicles towed. But Ordnungsamt may not manage the traffic, this is reserved to actual police, while the municipal police can do it. The Zoll in Germany has some overlap with the Guardia di Finanza, and some with the Agenzia delle Dogane. From what I learnt, there is no complete overlap, the competences are split differently among different agencies. This is why I believe we should concentrate on a localized system for the subtagging of police facility operators, so we can tell exactly which kind of police it is, which will depend on the country (or subarea) and their respecitive legislation. There is still some normalization to do, and it will not show the specific spezialization (if any), and maybe it could be interesting to suggest adding admin_level as well to represent the hierarchical position within the police force?
Maybe I overestimate similarities between countries, but it is not unusual for Germany to have a very complex structure. Let’s say the ambition here is to have a generic model for countries that fit it, and national models where they are needed.
For Italy, from the common operator values, I see a perfect fit with the proposed model:
That’s what I say, many countries will have a complex structure, and given the different traditions, political systems and structure, etc., it is not clear what these classes and branches should be about, in a generic sense and not referring to a specific country or subarea (e.g. police in Germany belongs mostly to the Länder, each Land has their own Polizeigesetz).
In Italy, while the Polizia Stradale is the same (a part of) the Polizia di Stato, there are plenty more police types in Italy, polizia forestale (which can be either carabinieri forestali or polizia provinciale), guardia costiera / capitanerie di porto, polizia di frontiera, polizia penitenziaria, guardia di finanza.
The Polizia Statale has different subsections, the polizia stradale and others like the Polizia di Frontiera, Polizia Ferroviaria, Polizia Postale, Polizia Scientifica, Reparti Mobili, Squadra Volanti, DIGOS, NOCS, and Anticrime squads.
These are all “national” police, as are the guardia di finanze, capitaneria di porto, carabinieri and all other police types and branches in Italy, save the municipal and provincial police.
Why does police:branch have enumerated values instead of police:specialization? From the naming, I would think that police:branch[:wikidata] would contain the common name + Q-id of the branch. I suppose that’s already covered by operator=?
This is already handled by the police=* tag
I didn’t know about police=* until now.
As with mountain rescue teams, there are cases where the duties of private organizations and police departments overlap. In that case, I’d like to add the same job tag to both, and I’d like a separate tag for the police to identify them as such. If this police tag existed, police facilities wouldn’t have to be tagged with the “amenity=police” tag, and it would help reduce the misuse of the “amenity” key.
Police duties vary by country, and if there are multiple areas of specialization, we may need to separate the values with a “;”.
“police:specialization” implies that the police do not handle other areas of expertise.
my interpretation would rather be the tag implies that this specialization is present, but it is not implying that other specializations cannot be available as well.
Again, I fail to see the issue. The model does not have to fit all situations in all countries. I already showed how e.g. polizia stradale perfectly fits the model.
The Polizia Statale has different subsections, the polizia stradale and others like the Polizia di Frontiera, Polizia Ferroviaria, Polizia Postale, Polizia Scientifica, Reparti Mobili, Squadra Volanti, DIGOS, NOCS, and Anticrime squads.
It is totally fine that Polizia Statale has more detail within it than can be caught with this model. Other, localized tags can extend it, if needed. But police:specialization should be able to capture most of the examples you gave.
Because I think for a general structure of branches, I think we will have:
So the proposed values are meant as a kind of test: are there sufficient places where the proposed classes work? It is not the idea to fit all the ways countries, regions and towns model their police forces, but rather avoid having to use a localized model everywhere - even if it fits a general logic.
Indeed, if you want to map all the details of the police force, the wikidata or name of the operator is the alternative.
For specialization, I would assume that there is a greater diversity in what exists, and that it might even be a list of specializations. Much like healthcare:speciality in fact (I should maybe change the tag to police:speciality!).
If this police tag existed, police facilities wouldn’t have to be tagged with the “amenity=police” tag, and it would help reduce the misuse of the “amenity” key.
That’s exactly what police=* is already for.
Police duties vary by country, and if there are multiple areas of specialization, we may need to separate the values with a “;”.
“police:specialization” implies that the police do not handle other areas of expertise.
The police:specialization tag is exactly like healthcare:speciality. It’s just an extra bit of information, and yes there could be multiple and I don’t think it necessarily implies other specialities are not present. In some other tagging models, they tried to avoid that by putting all the values in separate subkeys. In my opinion, that is only needed when the lack of something is explicitly needed, which I don’t think is the case here.
Tags describing job duties, such as “education=school”, do not restrict the operator. “education=school” allows “operator:type=public” and “operator:type=private”. In both cases, it’s the same school tag. A separate tag is required to specify an operator.
In this proposal, a single tag specifies both the job/task/role/purpose and the operator.
For the same task, the police may be responsible in one country but not in another. In this case, a simple difference in the operator requires multiple tags for the same task.
That’s exactly why tags that don’t specify an operator are best.
I think this is his opinion.