The police force of London was reorganised in 1829 based on the
recommendations put forward by the Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel. As a
result, the police eventually became nicknamed "bobbies". Bobbies wear a
uniform that is non-military in appearance. Their only regular weapon
is a short, wooden truncheon, which is kept out of sight and may not be
employed except in cases of self-defence or to restore order. Bobbies
who are deployed for dangerous missions may carry firearms for that
particular occasion. When summing up his reforms of the police force,
Peel stated that "the police are the public and the public are the
police."This should be the standard of policing that all governments should adhere to in maintaining peace and harmony in any country.
On the opposite end of this spectrum is the institution of what is generally known as the "secret police". These would be intelligence agencies, police agencies or law enforcement agencies that operate behind the veil of secrecy. Many times, such institutions operate beyond what is permitted by the law to protect the interests and political power of individual dictators or authoritarian regimes.
Instead of transparently enforcing the rule of law and allowing itself to be subject to public scrutiny as a normal police agency would, many of these secret police agencies exist specifically to operate above and beyond the law in order to suppress political dissent through clandestine acts of terror and intimidation targeted against enemies of the ruling political class.
Such secret police agencies tend to be accountable only to the executive branch of a government, often times only to the most powerful person in the country. They operate, at best, in partial secrecy where most, if not all, of their operations are deliberately obscured and hidden from public oversight. Such authority allows these secret police agencies to bolster a government's control over their own citizens while at the same time provide allowances for a government to deny prior knowledge to any violations of civil violations.
As a result, such secret police agencies make an excellent vehicle for overt and covert political repression.
The type of police we have in Malaysia