ACAB
An ACAB (a Tavari acronym from Anís Calqara Ambólantti Bolis, meaning Police, Ambulance, and Fire District) is a public body established to provide law enforcement, public safety, and emergency response services in Metradan and Acronis. The districts are independent of any provincial or municipal governments and governed by Boards of Supervisors elected by voters within the boundaries of the district. ACABs are supervised and regulated by the Ministries of Internal Affairs in both Metradan and Acronis, but do not report to them—national governments cannot give direct orders to ACABs outside of declared emergencies. First established by reforms in Metradan in the 1990s in response to a series of high profile acts of police brutality by the then law enforcement authority of the country, the branch of the national armed forces known as the Metradani Marshalls (modeled after the Royal Tavari Marshalls of the Royal Tavari Armed Forces), ACABs have been credited with reforming the culture of law enforcement in Metradan to one of respect for civil rights and ethical decision-making.
In the Tavari Division Crisis of 2021-2022, the Royal Tavari Marshalls in the province of Motai encouraged and provided advice and supplies to anti-Akronist extremists to commit acts of violence against Akronists. As a result, it was agreed in principle at the negotiations of the Ranat Accords by the governments of Tavaris and those who emerged from the Accords (Acronis, Elatana, Rodoka and the Isles, and the Union Territories of the Avtovati Isles and Metrati Anar) to demilitarize law enforcement. Adoption of the ACAB model across the entire Union was considered but concerns raised about the high degree of administrative capacity (and associated financial costs) needed to enact the system led the delegations to decide to take additional time to study reform options. As of 2023, only Tavaris itself has explicitly ruled out adopting the ACAB model, while Rodoka and Elatana are considering the ACAB model among others. The Council of the Tavari Union has decided to establish Public Safety Agencies in the Union Territories whose responsibilities are identical to those of ACABs but which are not independent public bodies but departments of the regular territorial governments.
In Metradan
History
Policing and law enforcement in Metradan was historically the province of the Tavari military, which was also responsible for domestic law enforcement everywhere else in Tavaris. After independence from Tavaris in 1905, the Royal Metradani Armed Forces (which dropped the Royal prefix after the transition to republican government in 1956) assumed this responsibility with a branch known as Marshalls, the same as Tavaris. Also like Tavaris, the soldiers of the Metradani Marshalls were drawn from the entire nationwide population and regularly assigned and relocated as the national military command determined was necessary. They went through the exact same basic training and used the same equipment as all other members of the military, and operated using virtually identical rules of engagement. While this system was largely uncontroversial among the ethnic Tavari population, the ethnic Cescolian population tended to strongly oppose it—not least of all because they formed some 20% of the population but not even 1% of the Marshalls, meaning the places where humans who overwhelmingly spoke Cescolian Norvian were policed by Tavari-speaking orcs.
Murder of Giobbe Pietrantonio
Conflict between Metradani Marshalls and the Cescolian populations they policed was common, but the national government rarely took any steps to address complaints from ethnic Cescolian community leaders until March 27th, 1991, when 24 year old Cescolian resident of Argiento (then known as Anídori) Giobbe Pietrantonio was killed while in custody by two Marshalls, Tevri Ventoren and Drenda Lavrashti. Pietrantonio was suspected of having stolen a pack of cigarettes and, when questioned on the street by the Marshalls, indeed had a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and did not have a receipt. The cigarettes had been purchased by Pietrantonio the day before, so he had discarded the receipt. Smoking is common in Metradan—at the time, about half of all Metradani people were regular smokers, in the modern day this has decreased to about 1 in 3 people—and realistically, it would not have been unusual for anyone to have a pack of cigarettes in their pocket. Still, the Marshalls took the presence of the cigarettes as proof of his theft and placed him under arrest.
Pietrantonio was outraged that he was being arrested and was combative toward the Marshalls, including kicking his feet toward them and, once in the car, began kicking the back of the seat. In response, the Marshalls decided to give Pietrantonio what was known informally by Marshalls as a “rough ride,” meaning they turned excessively sharply and frequently accelerated and decelerated, with the aim of jostling Pietrantonio around. In their eventual court cases, the Marshalls reported that this was a common practice for “troublesome perps” that they used frequently and that “rarely” led to “significant injury.” Lavrashti, who was driving, said she only intended to give Pietrantonio an “attitude adjustment.” However, Pietrantonio hit his head during the “rough ride” and died of a brain bleed. When the Marshalls went to notify Pietrantonio’s next of kin—which they did 23 hours later, one hour short of the legal deadline for them to do so—they discovered that he was, in fact, the son of the owners of the store who had reported the theft, and that there was no way he could have been guilty of the crime, as they would have recognized him.
All the Marshalls involved immediately attempted to cover up their involvement, including by offering to bribe the Inspector General of the Marshalls and employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who for the first time in Metradani history were called to assist in an investigation into military conduct. One Ministry official accepted the bribe, with which he proceeded to buy a luxury sports car and then, on his first ride in it, get into a traffic accident. The crash might not have gained national attention if not for the fact that the other car he crashed into happened to be in the motorcade of the President of Metradan, and it was immediately noticed by members of the press that there was no reasonable way an entry-level government bureaucrat could have afforded such a car.
The preliminary investigation by the Inspector General and the Ministry of Internal Affairs—which had been written unusually quickly, by March 31st—initially cleared the involved Marshalls of “intent to cause harm” and described the incident as “an unfortunate accident and an opportunity for learning and change in many respects.” The initial report did call for “immediate and major” changes to driving instruction for Marshalls, but no other structural changes. This report had not been finalized when it was leaked to the press, and its release almost immediately led to riots across Cescolian-speaking Metradan as well as in the capital, Acruni—riots which the Marshalls left almost unattended out of fear that their response would only cause escalation. As a massive crowd approached the presidential residence, President Badra Kantuvi shocked the nation by stepping out to address the crowd, during which address she resigned the presidency and offered what has been called “the closest thing to an apology the Metradani government has issued:”
—President Badra Kantuvi, 31 March 1991 |
Badra Kantuvi, an Akronist Democrat, had been the country's first President to be re-elected, and to this day holds the record for longest term in that office (7 years, from 1984 until 1991.) She had been remarkably popular, and her resignation not only increased her popularity but is credited with breaking the tensions in the country, as her televised resignation almost immediately led to the riots across the country fading in intensity. The evening after her resignation, instead across every major city in the country were candlelight vigils. Kantuvi was succeeded by the Speaker of the Diet, Ontran Vedendi, who was officially unaffiliated but who ran as an Akronist Democrat in the special election to confirm his accession later in 1991. Vedendi’s first address to the public, on the afternoon of April 1st, began with the words “The Metradani Marshalls will be entirely abolished by the end of this year, and never again will soldiers of the Armed Forces enforce the civil law in this country. Our soldiers have had the honor and privilege of serving the public as law enforcement, but today, I am taking this honor and privilege away from them forever, because they have squandered it and brought not just dishonor, shame, and embarrassment upon us, but have brought a deep, unspeakable evil into our society that we must now, all of us, do everything in our collective power to erase.”
Policing Reform Act of 1992
Immediately upon taking office, President Vedendi began transitioning the Metradani Marshalls out of active duty among the public. Units of the National Guard (the reserves and militia) were activated, especially ones in northern Metradan with high proportions of humans. While still officially military, these were soldiers serving in their own communities, which was immediately noticed especially by Cescolians as an improvement. Police officers from several other countries were also brought in, most as consultants on structural changes but some were deputized to serve in areas of especially high need while replacing Marshalls. Countries that sent officers included Arlavia, Cryria, Durakia, and Lapinumbia.
The process of drafting changes and writing the legislation to establish civilian police in Metradan took place over several months in 1991, all the while the Marshalls were gradually phased out and replaced with either foreign officers, National Guard troops, or military police officers—that is, those soldiers in the other branches tasked with policing soldiers and military bases. A Presidential Advisory Council on Police Reform was established and staffed entirely with foreign nationals, primarily Durakans, whose model of Sapientarian Policing was identified by President Vedendi as “the gold standard.” Vedendi deliberately sought outside advice as much as possible, and outright rejected all offers of assistance from Tavaris, saying “Tavari policing is how we got into this mess.”
On December 31st, 1991, President Vedendi issued dishonorable discharges to all 22,112 active duty soldiers in the Metradani Marshalls, leaving only about 3,000 civilian employees who were tasked with “drawing down the work of the Branch for dissolution in 1992.” The dishonorable discharges meant that the soldiers involved could not be rehired by other military branches, could never attain veteran's benefits, and were denied access to the military healthcare and pension systems. “Every Marshall is culpable. Every Marshall must bear that badge of shame forever,” said President Vedendi in his address announcing the mass discharge. The move was immensely unpopular among the former Marshalls but highly popular among the public. In the regularly scheduled legislative and presidential elections of 1992, President Vedendi and his Akronist Democrats won in a landslide on a platform of continuing and completing the work of police reform, while the country’s right-wing conservative party, the Liberal Party, campaigned on restoring the Marshalls and stopping the reforms and fell from 98 seats in the Diet to just 19.
The Policing Reform Act of 1992 was passed in June, not even two weeks after the new Diet had taken office, since most of the work of writing the bill had taken place over the past year. By then, the government had already established temporary “Law Enforcement Command Areas,” ad hoc groups of Ministry of Internal Affairs employees coordinating the deployment of police officers from other countries, Metradani National Guard troops, and Metradani military police officers to provide law enforcement across the country. The military officials following orders from these Command Areas were considered to no longer be on active military duty and could not, while on that assignment, communicate in any way whatsoever with their previous military commander or detachment. These Command Areas were also encouraged to focus strictly on their own community rather than coordinate a single national strategy and tailor their responses and policies to fit community needs and expectations. The ad hoc Law Enforcement Command Areas were replaced on 1 January 1993 by the ACABs established in the Policing Reform Act of 1992. Because the Command Areas were unlegislated paper creations of the executive branch, 1992 in Metradan is sometimes called “the Year Without Police.”
Structure
The Policing Reform Act of 1992 established eleven Police, Fire, and Ambulance Districts in Metradan. While in order to ensure officers serve the communities they are from, ACABs were designed with boundaries that took into account demographics, cultural affiliation, population density, and other factors, they were also designed to avoid becoming too closely affiliated with any one locality out of a fear that this could encourage officers to adopt rivalries or other cultural biases associated with particular localities. As such, ACABs are not named with the region or city that they serve and are instead numbered 1-11, with ACAB 1 in the far north and ACAB 11 to the southeast.
Each ACAB is governed by a Board of Supervisors, who are elected by and from the residents living within the boundaries of the district. An Inspector General reports directly to this Board—not to the Chief Administrative Officer, who the Board appoints to lead the day-to-day work of the agency—and leads an Accountability and Auditing Department tasked with ensuring officers follow policy and the law. While neither the Inspector General not the Chief Administrative Officer are popularly elected, it is possible for the voters of an ACAB to file a petition requesting a referendum on dismissing either of those officials if they have committed some action considered objectionable by the community. (The standard of “objectionable to the community” was left mostly undefined in the law to allow for a wide degree of local control but designed with some safeguards to prevent communities from undermining the intent of the reforms.) Recall elections for individual Supervisors and the entire Board are possible. Notwithstanding any recalls or referendums, ACAB Boards of Supervisors are elected every 4 years.
The Fire and Ambulance divisions report to the same Board of Supervisors and Chief Administrative Officer but are otherwise administratively separate. Neither of these have ever had even remotely similar levels of public complaint regarding their conduct, and their functioning as part of the ACABs is almost identical to their functioning as parts of provincial governments prior to the reform. Their inclusion as part of the ACABs was designed to help focus the work of the entire district around the notions of “emergency response” and “public safety,” rather than the police simply being tasked with “law enforcement.” The police are encouraged to consider themselves part of “the same team” as firefighters and paramedics.
Since 1993, no Tavari orc has been appointed to serve as Chief Administrative Officer of any ACAB, nor has any Tavari orc been named as the Deputy Minister for Police Oversight, an official within the Ministry of Internal Affairs charged with supervising the ACABs. Instead, these positions have been filled almost exclusively with ethnic Cescolians or foreign nationals, especially Arlavians, Cryrians, Durakans, and Lapinumbians. This has become something of an unwritten convention in Metradani society, and while one court case alleging species discrimination against orcs in ACAB leadership made it to Metradan’s Supreme Court, it was dismissed without comment by the court.
Disciplinary Procedures
The Policing Reform Act establishes that ACABs are exempt from civil service protections and also forbid their employees from joining a union or going on strike. Instead, labor bargaining for ACABs takes place every eight years under an established framework where officers and civilian employees elect bargaining representatives to negotiate with the Board of Supervisors directly for wages and benefits. Disciplinary, auditing, and other accountability procedures and policies are not part of this process and are defined in law to be the same across all ACABs.
Disciplinary procedures are legally divided into two categories: procedures for violations of civil rights and those for violations of policy. Officers who have been officially charged with a violation of civil rights policy are immediately suspended without pay, and the law strictly disallows back pay even in the event the officer is cleared of wrongdoing. Only medical benefits continue during a suspension, but if the officer is found guilty, they will be required to reimburse the ACAB for any medical coverage costs during the suspension, even if the injury was incurred at work. Officers who are found guilty of even one violation of civil rights are banned from working for any other ACAB for life. Multiple violations can lead to prison time. "Violations of civil rights" refers generally to actions that violate legal standards for interactions with the public, and not just those that lead to injury or death. For example, it is a violation of civil rights under the Policing Reform Act for an officer to cause "undue indignity" to any member of the public; the law defines "undue" as "any amount more than the absolute barest minimum possible." This has been one of the most commonly litigated violations under the law. Bribery and other financial impropriety on the part of an officer are also classified as violations of civil rights.
Violations of policy have less severe minimum penalties. A violation of policy is anything not explicitly called a violation of civil rights in the Policing Reform Act, but the term is typically used to refer to things such as missing a deadline for filing an incident report, failing a uniform inspection (for a reason other than a missing badge or body camera), or other "workplace matters." Not all of these violations even incur suspensions, and for those that do, they are typically with pay.
Each ACAB is required to publish the name of every one of their officers and a list of any infractions on their record, which in the modern day they do online but which in the early years involved printing out the files and making them available as books for the public to access at the ACAB office. Officers are required to provide their name and badge number on request, and it is considered a violation of civil rights—i.e. an immediate suspension without pay, termination, and ban from law enforcement for life—to decline to do so when asked. Since 2017, officers are required to wear and use body cameras at all times while on duty, and while it was decided not to automatically consider a camera turned off as a civil rights violation in the event a camera did simply technically fail, deliberately turning off one’s body camera or obstructing it is a violation. Similar rules apply to cameras inside police vehicles.
Effects of Reform
Not unsurprisingly, Metradan has struggled to hire and retain police officers since these reforms were instituted. Especially in early years, officers—especially former Marshalls, the hiring of which was permitted in 1994 out of recognition that there simply were not enough candidates otherwise—complained of a lack of due process, a lack of trust in them on the part of their supervisors, of incredibly high expectations and incredibly harsh penalties when they failed to meet the expectations. Few changes have been made in response to these complaints because changes have proven to be immensely politically unpopular. Since 1992, the number of sworn law enforcement officers in Metradan has never exceeded 10,000, less than half the number of Marshalls discharged in 1991. As a result, Metradani police have been required to strictly strategize and prioritize the crimes they investigate, which has been credited with reducing officers using investigations into alleged minor offenses as a method of harassment or intimidation—exactly what led to the death of Giobbe Pietrantonio—but has also been credited with massive decreases in response rates to reports of minor, nonviolent crimes such as, for example, graffiti, property damage, shoplifting, and petty theft, all of which are regularly anecdotally claimed to be “common” in Metradan since the reforms. Rates of the issuance of speeding tickets have also drastically fallen, though it is disagreed to what extent this is caused by decreased police ability to respond to speeders or to an actual decrease in the incidence of speeding.
Rates of major crimes such as murder, assault, and rape have shown decreases in the years since the reform, while reports of minor crimes like property damage have shown an increase, though the rate of that increase has steadily declined since 1993. Business owners regularly complain that shoplifting, graffiti, and things like broken windows are all increasing costs, especially insurance costs, and harming the Metradani economy, but there are few other regular political objections to the reforms in the modern day. However, while reports of minor property damage are up overall across the country, they show a decrease in ACABs 1-3, which correspond to the Zampanea region of northern Metradan home to the majority of ethnic Cescolians.
The most obvious effects have been in the changes to the conduct of Metradani law enforcement, which since 1993 has shown a stark reduction across the board in usage of all kinds of force. Almost no ACAB officers carry firearms, and those who do are required to meet even higher accountability standards and can have no demerits on their record whatsoever. Despite having fewer officers, response times and crime report resolution rates have skyrocketed in Zampanea as ACAB officers now actually respond to the needs of Cescolian speakers instead of ignoring them as Marshalls often did. Rates of suspects killed before they can be tried have fallen to fewer than 10 a year, down from 204 in 1991. There has not been a single Metradani law enforcement officer charged with an act of official bribery since 2001, with the pre-ACAB record length of time without such a charge being just 14 months. For these reasons, the reforms have remained incredibly popular, and every time a major party has proposed changes to the law, that party has seen a major decrease in support the following election.
In Acronis
In June 2022, Matron Vana Dandreal announced that Acronis would adopt the ACAB model “as soon as possible,” while former Royal Tavari Marshalls hired into the Acronian military, known as the Peacekeepers, would temporarily serve as a “National Police.” The Acronian Synod passed the ACAB Act of 2022 in September, which instituted a system almost identical to that in Metradan. Taking effect on 1 January 2023, the law established five ACABs, including one each in the three Acronian provinces of Crystal, Anara, and Indar, one for Mount Avotro National Park, and one covering the two national parks on the Tears of the Moon. While the former three are named after and use the same boundaries as provinces, they are entirely independent of the provincial governments.
Administratively, Acronian ACABs work quite like Metradani ones, featuring an elected Board of Supervisors and an appointed Chief Administrative Officer. Unique to Acronis is that each ACAB also has a Chief Officer of Religious Obligation, appointed by the Matron and tasked with ensuring the ACAB follows religious as well as legal guidelines. This CORO, however, once appointed, reports to and can be dismissed by the Board of Supervisors, and once dismissed, can never be reappointed.
The “National Police” that existed briefly as a division of the Acronian military ceased to exist on 1 January 2023. However, the Peacekeepers continue to closely work with the ACABs because they are also responsible for the security of Akronist temples—the role in which they served in Akronist history until Acronis became an independent state. In fact, the majority of Peacekeepers still serve in this capacity, as Acronis has only begun to develop its military capacity, and intends as a general rule to maintain “as small a military as possible,” per the Matron.
Proposals Elsewhere
Elatana
Since independence, the Royal Tavari Marshalls have continued without any change in responsibility or jurisdiction as the Royal Elatanan Marshalls, but Prime Minister Tevri Kantõši Nolandar has said “While we are going to take the time to do it right, Elatana absolutely will abolish military enforcement of civil law.” He has also said “Elatana likes the ACAB model and we are very likely to go forward with ACABs, perhaps with some modification.”
Elatana, like Metradan, has an ethnic minority population concentrated in one area of the country. Unlike Metradan, however, Elatana has no history of state suppression of the ethnic Alkari minority, and as in Tavaris there are concerns that the strict accountability measures and restrictions on labor contracts would cause too great a loss in recruitment and retention in officers while not delivering anywhere near the same level of improvement in civil rights outcomes. Debates in the Diet of Elatana around law enforcement reform have generally centered around whether or not to weaken the accountability measures.
Rodoka
The Royal Tavari Marshalls in Rodoka became the Rodokan National Police, and have been retained as a high-level “supervisory police” over a series of local police departments which are in the process of being set up. Presiding Chief Ivi Puna Laar called this “closer to the Arlavian model than the Metradani model,” but has indicated an openness into adopting some Metradani accountability measures, especially in terms of mandating the public disclosure of civil rights violations. While some in the Rodokan Diet have proposed a wholesale adoption of the ACAB model, these proposals have not gained traction.
Tavaris
After Metradan demilitarized its police, the question was immediately raised in Tavaris if it should do the same. However, due to the lack of a similar incident to spark public rage, there was less pressure and less impetus to go through the work and expense of establishing an entirely new police system. However, it did lead Prime Minister Elešai Tarelda Ektovan to pass in 1993 a law allowing for municipalities over 100,000 people to establish their own civilian police departments, who would assume nearly all responsibility for law enforcement within their city limits. Only three cities ever took advantage of this: Nuvrenon, Crystal Coast, and Lantaž.
In 2022, Tavaris considered but decided against establishing ACABs as Acronis did. “Tavaris will look to develop a new model that fits its own particular needs and circumstances,” said Prime Minister Žarís Nevran Alandar. Metradan’s regular inability to hire and retain police officers was cited as the primary reason against the switch, though the high administrative capacity needed to handle all the elections and oversight within ACABs were also a factor. While the continued existence of the Royal Tavari Marshalls has become extremely politically unpopular, their reform has been delayed as the Diet seeks to study several different possible options and the Cabinet has not yet indicated a preference of its own.
Union Territories
The Council of the Tavari Union, a body consisting of one representative from each Tavari Union member state, is the ultimate governing authority for the Avtovati Isles and Metrati Anar. While the Ranat Accords generally obligate the Council to establish home rule for the territories and delegate to them a significant degree of autonomy, the structure of law enforcement was determined by the Council to be a Council-level responsibility not delegated to the territories within the text of the Accords. As such, the Council proceeded to draft legislation setting up law enforcement agencies within each territory.
As elsewhere in the Tavari-speaking world, the ACAB model was considered but ultimately not selected. The Council of the Tavari Union established Public Safety Agencies in both territories that are agencies of the territorial governments, not independent bodies. Unlike ACABs, Public Safety Agencies are led by a Director who is appointed by the territorial executive, not an elected Board of Supervisors. However, they do each have a Public Safety Accountability Board consisting of three members—the territorial executive, one member appointed by the Council of the Tavari Union, and one member elected by the voters of the territory—which has the same auditing and disciplinary powers as ACAB Boards of Supervisors. Public Safety Agencies, like ACABs, also handle all emergency services, like ambulances and fire prevention.