Anthropology has a long, if not well understood, history of engagements with policing. Since the 19th century, police work has created the material conditions which enable anthropological research in many field sites, especially in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Conversely, the theoretical work of anthropologists have served as foundational justifications for regimes of policing. For example, both the ‘criminal anthropology’ of Lombroso and the anthropométrie judiciare of Alphonse Bertillon were attempted engagements with contemporary anthropological problems such as parsing competing philosophical claims of free will, rationality, and the materiality of the body. This dialog extends through the work of Malinowski on informal social control mechanisms--central to much of the conceptual infrastructure of “community policing,” “broken windows” and “order maintenance” initiatives--and various iterations of cultural theory, from “culture of poverty” frameworks through contemporary engagements with “police culture.” Even today, amidst an anthropological profession nominally committed to racial and social justice, anthropologists continue a challenging pathway towards engaging with police and policing, as collaborators, interlocutors, antagonists and as objects of study in themselves. This panel, the first of two related sessions, will explore the legacies of such engagements--paying particular attention to the challenges and pitfalls they engender.