ABSTRACT
According to Peter K. Manning, the social mandate of the American police is a hodgepodge of conflicting duties and responsibilities that has developed with little input from the police themselves. 1 He is correct. Firefighting, the uniformed public service frequently compared to policing, has a clear mandate that firefighters have helped to fashion: the fire service exists to prevent fires and to extinguish as quickly and as safely as possible all those it did not prevent. It is virtually impossible to derive a similarly succinct and comprehensive statement of the police role. Instead, it is safe to say only that police perform a variety of services that must be available seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, that may require the use or threat of force, and that are not readily available from any other public agency or private institution. 2
