Unlike the UK, the US has never had a discussion about what good policing should be about. Rather, US policing has moved forward as a series of improvised solutions to immediate problems of social order. This began with informally organised community watch patrols, and has included the police in the South acting as slave patrols, while police forces in northern cities have served the interests of ward bosses in industrialising cities. These efforts have primarily addressed the needs of prevailing local power and have not reflected a discussion among all of the members of particular communities about what democratic policing should be about. In the US, this style of policing by improvisation has fitted well within a long tradition of local political control of the police and the courts.

During the 1970– 80s, US police defined themselves largely in terms of addressing ongoing crime waves. During this era, the police focused their organisations around combating violent, often drug-related, crime. They defined their mission as harm reduction through crime management. This definition of the police largely, or solely, in terms of fighting crime continues to this day. The predominance of harm reduction via crime control as the goal of US policing has combined with a force-based model of legal authority. Police officers have been trained and deployed to use force to compel compliance.

This conception of policing would seem to leave little room for concerns about popular legitimacy in discussions of policing. However, during the 20th century, the US has paid a heavy price for failing to seriously engage with the need to address issues of police–community relations. One part of that heavy price is through the recurrence of outbreaks of urban unrest like the riots that occur periodically within US cities. The pattern of police misconduct, followed by protests, riots and destruction, continues. Equally troubling is that these events happen within a general climate of public distrust and, often, open hostility between the police and the communities that they patrol and, at least in theory, protect. Police use of force fuels distrust and anger. Distrust and anger promotes crime, undermines cooperation and, periodically, provokes collective violence. In this context, it is telling that over the last 30 years, while crime rates in the US have plummeted, trust in the police in American communities has not risen.