ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates what that practice looks like in the imagined good shift, while also describing the four most common types of space in which South African Police Service (SAPS) officers work: the urban township, affluent city, rural town, and village. A shift that bolstered the narrative that the police way was the right way was a good shift. The good shift provides an opportunity to explore officers' attempts to work through a central contradiction in democratic policing – that police must at times break rules to defend rules. Most shift-bound officers staff front desks in stations' Community Service Centres (CSC), carry out sector patrols, and respond to complaints or calls for service. CPU shift patterns are based on crime pattern analysis. CPU officers are uniformed, conduct patrols, and respond to urgent calls for assistance. The chapter describes the 'work' element of research question, and shed more light on the contextual forces at play in officers' private and occupational lives.
