 Instead, he looked to France, where, in his view, they had achieved "the greatest degree of perfection" with their police.Others have noted that preventive police were sprouting up in Glasgow, where he lived before moving to London, calling into question the significance of his river police as a unique policing innovation.The significance of preventive policing in eighteenth century metropolitan London is that Colquhoun and the other utilitarians were looking not just at the problem of crime, but to the larger problem posed by the poverty of the working class and in securing private property.