Hi,
For work, it was useful for me to have a differentiation between the local police and federal police here in Belgium. I invented something ad hoc, but I’d like to turn it into a proposal now. Here are some initial thoughts.
The main difference is between which type of government is organizing the police force. Initially I just used police:type as key, but someone suggested police:branch.
The way this is organized within countries is very different from place to place. However, there are some general patterns to be seen. I would clearly differentiate between this general pattern and special country-specific details. For the latter, I would suggest simply using operator:wikidata. Then you can get all further details about the police force from Wikidata.
As for general patterns, these would fit a lot of countries already. Some definitions and copied from wikipedia:
gendarmerie: this is a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population. Common in Europe, former Soviet countries and some countries colonized by France. This is not the same as a military police, which are parts of the military that police within their own rank and hence could be mapped as a subtype of military organizations, not police organizations.
municipal_police: police that is operated at the municipal, city or local level. In Belgium, municipalities from a police zone where they work together on a single local police force. But since the zone is still controlled by the municipalities, it fits here.
regional_police: police operated by an admin level between the nation and the municipality, for example state police in the US or the Catalan Mossos d’ Esquadra.
national_police: the police forces operated by national government
street_warden: these assist with police duties at the local level, without actually belonging to the police force and with limited authority (usually fines for small infractions only)
For gendarmerie and street_warden, it could be argued that they are not really a police force at all. I would like to avoid pushing them into a totally different tag than amenity=police because that’s how people already map them.
While we’re at it, I’d also suggest police:specialisation. For example, some police forces have subgroupings that may have separate offices and logo’s and work on one specific subject or have a specific topic. Some values could be railway, airport, border, traffic, canine, aerial, …
I’m left wondering how you map a police service too in terms of areas of responsibility? In the UK, the Metropolitan Police (Met) serve most of London. There is also a separate City of London service covering part of London outside of the Met area. However, parts of the Met also have national responsibilities. Other UK police services have national responsibilities, but a subset of the nation, such as the British Transport Police or Civil Nuclear Constabulary.
In other countries, I recall some state or national police services fill gaps not covered by local police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and some (all?) US state police I think are examples of this gap filling.
How do you map this variation in serviced geographies by single or multiple services?
just a Austrian view / addition about your considerations. I would like to sort the list hierarchically from top to bottom:
national_police: Bundespolizei (Federal Police); unified national police force, operates across the country, controlled by the “BMI” (Ministry of the Interior); they operate from the capital (Vienna) to the smallest hamlet / farm
still national_police?: Bundeskriminalamt / BK (Criminal Investigation Service); focus on investigations like serious crimes, organized crime, cyber crime … working together with Interpol and Europol
municipal_police: Stadtpolizei / Gemeindepolizei (Municipal/Local Police); some cities have their own kind of Police locally, only a view cities does have one
gendarmerie: Austria used to have a Gendarmerie 20 years ago but they merged to the “Bundespolizei”
street_warden: (Ordnungsamt?) Austria does not have this AFAIK, that would be the “Stadtpolizei”, see wiki
Missing ones / specialities:
Militärstreife / Militärpolizei (Armed Forces’ military police?); they only have authority over military personnel and is not part of civilian law enforcement
Border police (Grenzpolizei) – part of Bundespolizei
Traffic police (Verkehrspolizei) – also part of Bundespolizei
Airport police (Flughafenpolizei) – operates at Vienna and other airports for example
Dog unit (Hundestaffel / Diensthunde) - a separate police dog team
Aerial police (Flugpolizei) – uses helicopters for search and rescue or tactical operations
Special Forces (Einsatzkommando Cobra) – Austria’s elite counterterrorism unit
Why not simply police=[subtype]? This follows other classification hierarchies that use a value as a key to provide further detail (e.g. tourism=guest_house, guest_house=bed_and_breakfast).
There’s some discussion of that here, but I can’t see any links to any “voting”. Apparently it was “approved” as early as 2012 (or maybe our wiki is just crap).
Before police proper is considered, there is the fundamental question of what is “police”. Currently, there’s no specific tagging for non-“police” law enforcement. This means it is dubious whether they can use police= features. It would be inconvenient and unscalable to have another set of =academy , =barracks , =helicopter_unit , =offices , =range , =storage , and =training_area for other law enforcement agencies. Then the other law enforcement agencies will need yet another set of categories. Worse, many of them can be called “Police”. Federal law enforcement in the United States - Wikipedia
Then there’s “private” police. They would need to be distinguished from your polices of “government” levels. There are also some special “public” police.
Ignoring the above, I find it the best to follow military_service= , as the *_service= naming has been voted on. police_service= will be familiar and consistent.
“Branch” is not the clearest whether it’s a separate service, or a branch inside a service. There are some ideas for iteg service_branch= , although it may be worked on. A common solution to both military= and police= would be ideal. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Key:military_service#(How)_do_we_tag_subgroups?
However, related to the start, a special police service needs to be distinguished from a special unit of the government police service. Eg Public/private rail police vs Municipal police rail unit.
I believe the issue is for once not the wiki, somebody created the “police” subtag page back then, and that was reused when the proposal past making the history of it a bit weird, this Proposal:Tag:Police - OpenStreetMap Wiki seems to be the proposal page, the question is where did the voting go … ah here Proposal:Tag:Police - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Before police proper is considered, there is the fundamental question of what is “police”.
this is something the countries should decide by themselves (e.g. in Germany, is Zoll or Ordnungsamt a kind of police? Justizvollzugsbeamte? Bundesgrenzschutz? The BfV as successor of the Gestapo, which had police in its name? Luftsicherheitspolizei?)
hm, I think the term police implies it is public, private police has other names and is not “police”
if a specific topic, use police:specialisation, for example nuclear_sites or traffic
if a more complicated spatial area: consider creating a proposal of your own to model that somehow
the case of Austria: fits pretty good with the model, I think. By the way, from what I understand on wikipedia, the Ornungsamt is exactly what I mean with street_warden. The
Military Police: this should be military_service=military_police. Maybe I’ll include that in the proposal, because otherwise the confusion with gendarmerie will continue. My initial specialisation list could indeed have aerial as well as airport
Speaking of, military_service=gendarmerie already exists. There are only 38 cases though, whereas 3846 police:FR=gendarmerie are mapped. So it makes more sense to me to keep this under the police logic.
I should have mentioned police=*! It deals with the kind of infrastructure you can find, not with their specialisation nor organizational level. It is fit for its purpose and can just keep doing its thing.
There’s the suggestion to use police_service instead of police:branch, following the military_service example. The tag is not exactly the same kind of classification though. In fact, it seems more close to the police:specialisation proposal. And I’d like to keep the police:* logic
gendarmerie and street_warden already extend amenity=police beyond “core” police. Private police could be a value under police:branch? But I tend to agree that private security services can be left out of scope.
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.
police:branch=: If police_service= is unsuitable, then still doesn’t have good naming. These are not “branches”, but separate police forces, perhaps similar to US Armed Forces vs National Guard vs State Defense Force (I’m surprised this wasn’t discussed in the military= proposal, and seems incompletely documented). So maybe police_force= ?
=gendarmerie : police:FR= is France-specific, and existed as a solution before military_service= appeared. The difference of polices is that they are civilian, not “military”.
=street_warden : The more common term is “traffic warden”, but there are many variations. “wardens” “belong” to the municipal police force, not existing a separate force. Traffic Officer of a road agency is a mix of road services, emergency services, and law enforcement (which falls into the greater issue of what is “police” for law enforcement agencies in general). Parking enforcement officer - Wikipedia
police:specialisation= The problem with is as I said, these can sometimes be a separate force, not only as different units in one force. “specialization” doesn’t fully describe that situation.
=traffic : Further complicating this, most US ones act as a state police. Is it still “specialized” then, and what to use for actual specializations inside the “highway patrol”?
=canine : Larger police forces might have different dog units for each tasks, belonging to another “specialization”
" Optionally military_service=* could also be combined with admin_level=* to indicate the level of government associated with a base, as there are sub-national military installations, as well as national. e.g.
Strange. Anyway, it seems State Defense Force and National Guard can’t be distinguished from each other generically yet?
For the topic here, admin_level= can again be used as an alternative, or supplement to the word-based distinction of polices. While I personally like the clarity of “municipal” instead of the usual OSM “local”, the “regional” is awkward. It can have specific meanings. Regional police - Wikipedia
As seen there, they can’t distinguish nicely between a single municipality, multiple municipalities, and the higher level of governments in states or provinces. Maybe “local” is better than “municipal” after all.
But then this is still mixing up coverage and level of government. Aside from public or private special police forces responsible for specific facilities, eg there are many capitol polices. The state ones would have their responsibility overstated. The US federal one can enforce nationally, but is still centered on Congress.
Format-wise, the =*_police is quite redundant. Can be considered from =municipal , =regional , and =national at least.
Per Kovoschiz’s original post, there are private organizations with their own police services who have the same authority and force of law behind them as government agencies. E.g. railway police in Canada, as mentioned before. They are most definitely police…
Yes, who are employed by a private company, but the website then says:
"In Canada, CPKC Police Service members are Federal Police Officers duly appointed by virtue of S. 44 of the Railway Safety Act and are authorized as a Peace Officer in Canada.
In the United States, our members are fully commissioned Police Officers within the state in which they operate and are empowered by that state to enforce the law. The extent to which railway Police Officers may exercise law enforcement authority and definition of jurisdiction varies by state.
Railway Police also have a Federal Interstate authority granted under Title 49 USC 28101, which permits duly appointed railway Police Officers to exercise their powers in any state.
In Canada, CPKC Police Service members are employed by Canadian Pacific Kansas City but are public servants, sworn to the Crown to uphold the law and protect the public. They are the same as city police who are employed by the municipality but are agents of the Crown. In the United States CPKC Police Service members are employed by CPKC but are commissioned by the State in which they operate to enforce the law to extent defined by the State and to protect public & keep the peace."
All of which would suggest, to me at least, that yes, they are actual “official” Police, not just private?
Yes, they are “actual police”, which was my point.
I suppose you could say they are “not just private” insofar as their powers and responsibilities are limited by government regulation, but they are most assuredly “private police” insofar as they are employed by the railway and exist to police the railway’s (private) property. If this is not what anyone else who has commented in this topic meant by “private police”, then I don’t know what they meant.
Yes, they are “actual police”, which was my point.
I suppose you could say they are “not just private” insofar as their powers and responsibilities are limited by government regulation, but they are most assuredly “private police” insofar as they are employed by the railway and exist to police the railway’s (private) property.
maybe an exception in the US and Canada, at least in the US you also have privately run prisons IIRC. For example in Italy, the railroad police is a part of the federal police (Polizia di Stato) and in Germany it is the Bundesgrenzschutz (also a federal police), while there was a specific force until 1992, which was employed by the railway (but it at the time it was a public railway, Deutsche Bundesbahn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police
Let me should first thank @hoserab for replying. I scrolled past you with next long response.
The issue is three-fold here. Besides how they are private entirely, they are a separate force, and a entire task-specific force dedicated to rail, not a rail unit in a general-purpose police force.
For non=government polices, UK has some such at seaports, the Belfast Airport, Liverpool’s road Mersey Tunnels, and other minor ones List of law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories - Wikipedia
As ports are discussed, I should mention US port authority polices, which don’t seem to have private companies. They are often inter-state, and have a jurisdiction not only in seaports. Airports, transit by rail with even bus, and bridge or tunnel road crossings. A “Port Authority” can even have no ports. Delaware River Port Authority - Wikipedia
There other notable complexities
Indeed, higher level polices doing local policing is another excellent question. Then there’s the CIty of London exception.
For options to specify the jurisdiction, anecdotally service_area= has been used for naming what some dozens emergency:*= disaster relief facilities cover. target= for an office=diplomatic with country codes.
In case anyone wants to give some thought to a =nuclear with the CNC mention, it should be remembered nuclear power station policing is not the same as nuclear and radioactive attack policing. NBC / CBRN may be covered by counter-terrorism, hazmats, or bombs and explosives, etc.
To summarize, there are have various different aspects between police forces, and the police units. Worse, something not mentioned yet is the =police station itself. Multiple units can share a =police station. They may not be related to the geographical function of it, merely being based there.
to model that somehow