Using data from ethnographic work and interviews with young British Asian men conducted in 2002 and again in 2012, this paper identifies the powerful real and imagined role the police play in these young men’s negotiation of belonging and identity. Experiences of policing are shown to meaningfully shape individual and collective claims of belonging. These negotiations are seen to contribute to, and be derived from, volatile climates of racism, fractured social relations and cultures of intolerance, rendering explicit the powerful cultural work of policing.