This paper develops and elaborates an alternative metaphor to Jack R. Greene’s simile which likens policing with the Sea, viz: The Raft of the Medusa. It provides a critical appraisal of police meliorism through a consideration of police research in relation to ‘front-line policing’, police management, and the viewpoint of the ‘police intelligentsia’. It argues that, if the world is to be made better by means of police science, it requires that its practitioners cultivate a philosophical awareness of the profound limitations of that science.