This article uses the notion of policeness to explore the essence of what police are, what makes for a police and what makes it recognized as such. Western ideas of police are based on a specific understanding of what a police organization is, but this is not necessarily the case in the global South. Based on the experience of Somalia’s police forces, it appears that while there is something universally distinctive about police organizations, police are best understood as a project reflecting political and social processes within unequal fields of power. Ultimately, policeness, which alludes to the symbolic and coercive functions associated with police, is a matter of perception.