Given the recurring unrest in French suburbs and their absence in Germany, this paper examines the question of to what extent the collective action repertoire differs between German and French police forces. Police powers of stop and search demon-strate the relevance of occupational norms and values, which point in different directions depending on the context. In the studied German city, particularly in the most deprived areas identity checks are recognized as an additional workload by the po-lice, and therefore used less often. In contrast, French police officers perceive identi-ty checks as belonging to their professional identity.
