I'm not familiar with British politics, but, after working out a cryptic quote today by Sir Robert Peel, I looked up his biography. Peel founded the Metropolitan police force in London in 1829 when he was Home Secretary because the crime rate in the city was out of control. His philosophy was that the police were the public and the public were the police. In other words, the citizens have a duty to protect their own communities. The "peelers" or "bobbies" were paid about the same as day laborers to emphasize they were not above ordinary citizens. (I don't think it takes much imagination to figure out what Peel would have thought about Antifa and Black Lives Matter thugs.)
