The purposes of this paper are essentially four: (1) To establish a justification for viewing the police as an agency of municipal government; (2) To imagine the varied contributions the police could and do make to the overall performance of municipal government and the quality of urban life beyond reduction of crime and enforcement of the criminal law; (3) To develop ideas about how these contributions outside the boundaries of crime control, law enforcement and criminal justice processing could be recognized through measurement systems that could accurately capture the full public value contributed by police departments to the quality of life in their cities; and (4) To look at an example of a police organization that appears to be doing in practice what this article recommends in theory--the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, Police Department. Notes