Daily policing policy and training regard certain types of people, including the majority of those engaged in various political activities, as legitimate targets for police suspicion. The modern urban police officer is conditioned to regard radical political groups as criminals from whom society requires protection. Although the police claim their authority on behalf of the whole of society and its basic principles of organization, their power is used on behalf of particular groups whose views they share. The groups on behalf of which the police act change according to circumstances; they will be different in the case of a hit and run motor accident than in a racist demonstration, for example. The police claim, however, that they act only on behalf of all citizens. This claim has gone largely unchallenged, despite the disputes which could and should occur over subjects like police powers, operations, organization, training, accountability, and spending. Because there is no tradition of political disagreement over any aspect of policing, the police have been allowed to make their own policies and operate behind a rhetoric of their own choosing. The police have already consigned demonstrators, pickets, squatters, blacks, gays, feminists, immigrants, and the Irish to the status of threats to society. Unless the police are challenged, their list of policing targets is likely to grow longer. Notes are provided.