ABSTRACT
Roadblock operations are a very prominent feature of the policing landscape in South Africa. They are increasingly being employed as a tactic for crime reduction and as a mechanism for reassuring the public that police are ‘out there’, providing a visible service. The paper draws on limited observation of police roadblocks in Durban and on interviews with police operational leaders and lower ranking police officers who have been involved in roadblock operations. In this paper I try to answer the following questions: How do police conduct roadblock operations within a framework of community-oriented service delivery? Who do the police target/profile in conducting such stop and search operations? What do the police understand as the real deliverables of such operations? How do the public view and respond to roadblock operations?
