The body of officers representing the civil authority of government is known as police. Police typically are responsible for maintaining public order and safety, enforcing the law, and preventing, detecting, and investigating criminal activities. These functions are known as policing. Police are often also entrusted with various licensing and regulatory activities. However, police scholars have criticized this popular understanding of the word “police” — that it refers to members of a public organization having the legal competence to maintain order and enforce the law — for two reasons. First, it defines police by their ends rather than by the specific means that they use to achieve their goals. Second, the variety of situations in which police are asked to intervene is much greater than law enforcement and order maintenance.

There is now a consensus among researchers that the common feature among all the different agencies engaged in policing is the legal competence to enforce coercive, nonnegotiable measures to resolve problematic situations. Such situations are characterized by their potential for harm and the need to solve them urgently before they develop that potential. Hence, the actual use of coercion or the threat of using it allows police to put a quick, nonnegotiated, and conclusive end to problematic situations.

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