Policing is a threat to public health and human rights.

### Summary box The impact of policing on individual and collective well-being and human rights has gained renewed attention. In 2020, global protests against police violence, racism and white supremacy were met with further violence by state security actors. In Nigeria, at least 56 people were killed during protests in opposition to the Nigerian police force’s ‘Special Anti-Robbery Squad’ in October 2020 alone.1 Peripheral calls to defund and abolish the police have gained extraordinary mainstream support. Such a shift has coincided with public scrutiny of state responses to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, examination of public investment in health and social services, and calls to eliminate militarised and biosecuritised public health responses.2 We must understand the extent to which policing has been framed as essential to the function of safe societies. Substantial sociological and philosophical inquiry has long recognised contemporary policing as a product of disciplinary and regulatory power, and …