Both the police and citizen critics of the police must modify their extreme positions on the control and review of police-citizen contacts. Police cannot resist efforts to provide aggrieved citizens adequate opportunities to air their grievances against the police; critics of the police, on the other hand, must recognize the realities and complexities of police work, the handicaps under which the police function, and the difficulty in achieving effective control in a police operation. In discussing the factors that complicate control and review, this paper focuses on the adversarial nature of the police function, the insensitivity that stems from dealing routinely with crises, the absence of adequate guidelines, department-wide practices that are themselves questionable, an atmosphere of duplicity and hypocrisy, the fear of incurring tort liability, police reluctance to incriminate fellow officers, and dealing with abuse while building morale. The section on opportunities for improvement through changes in administrative practices suggests making maximum use of positive approaches, viewing individual wrongdoing as an agency problem, measuring performance and identifying patterns of wrongdoing, identifying officers with a propensity for misconduct, training to prevent misconduct, and the investigation of complaints. The concluding section on the provision of citizen redress discusses appeals from administrative decisions on specific complaints of officer wrongdoing and how to deal with pervasive agency-tolerated misconduct. 51 notes and 5 study questions