ABSTRACT
A minority of people, most of whom are relatively powerless, directly experience an ‘unacceptable face of police work’. This ‘ugly face’ is carefully concealed from the majority of respectable citizens, who instead are presented with a media-projected image of the police which is both partial and idealized (Chibnall 1977; Christensen, Schmidt, and Henderson 1982; Hurd 1979). In this image, the police are dramatically portrayed as waging war on our behalf against such dangerous criminals as muggers, armed robbers, thieves, murderers, terrorists, and an assortment of psychopaths.
