This book began with a problem often identified as ‘police racism’, which refers to the processes of stigmatisation, harassment, criminalisation and discrimination against visible or cultural groups by police authorities. I have argued that police racism is a not a simple or clearcut problem: discrimination is inextricably tied to the structural and cultural organisation of police work, as well as deeply embedded in the historical and political positions of minorities in society. It is therefore possible for people to deny the existence of police racism. For example, if one takes the commonsense view that police work is basically reactive, then the issue of differential targeting and over-representation of visible minorities in criminal statistics is largely irrelevant. Police officers, it is argued, are simply doing what is required of them in terms of preventing crime and maintaining order. If there is a problem, it lies within those communities which are more deviant, more disorderly and more criminal than the rest. The trouble with the commonsense view is that it exaggerates the extent to which police officers are mere automatons charged with law-enforcement duties. Decades of police research has demonstrated that both police managers and street-level officers routinely exercise discretion in law-enforcement decisions. The frequent use of public-order offences and the heavy-handed deployment of tactical response police against Aboriginal people, for example, cannot be interpreted as simply reactive policing. Much of the harassing and abusive behaviour of police officers reported by the National Inquiry into Racist Violence certainly cannot be passed off as normal police practice.