Legal research is not limited to court decisions andappellate reviews. Since police work determines whichcases enter the justice system, police work,especially street patrol, is essentially theembodiment of criminal law. In this paper, usingconversation transcriptions from police-citizenencounters as my data, and applying Lacan's Theory ofFour Discourses, I examine how subjectivities arerepressed and expressed by the police through controlof the situational definition. I provide thelimitations of ``mainstream'' methods of police researchand suggest how a critical semiotic analysis mightovercome some of the deficiencies.