Police departments vary in the way in which they use their authority to arrest, with the heaviest emphasis on arrest occurring in departments Wilson classifies as 'legalistic.' A legalistic department will issue traffic tickets at a high rate and make a large number of misdemeanor arrests. The police literature highlights two relationships between arrests and police-citizen conflicts. One is the use of the arrest as a weapon in conflict, and the second is the use of arrest as a self-protective measure when physical conflict has occurred. The productivity-violence link is of most concern for legalistic departments, where the use of the arrests as the productivity index is emphasized. The Oakland study examined police citizen conflict over a period when the department was undergoing rapid policy and administrative change. Police-citizen conflict was found to decrease sharply with a deemphasis of legalism, and citizen resentment of police as expressed in complaints also subsided. An emphasis on productivity as measured by arrests and tickets tended to produce an increase in conflicts with citizens. There was some evidence that frequency of conflict was associated with arrest quality. Further, it was found that officer behavior tending toward the production of conflict with citizens can be changed through intervention designed and implemented by other officers, such as the peer review panel. Suggestions for future research in this area are offered, along with 15 references.