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This article, which draws on direct observation and interviews with police officers and on questionnaires completed by the public, compares decisions made by French and German police officers concerning identity checks and seeks to contextualize these decisions within respect to national styles of policing. Even though the objectives of such checks are similar (fighting crime, asserting authority, gathering intelligence), the extent, frequency and targets of controls differ. French police do more identity checks than their German counterparts. Ethnic minorities are a more recurrent target of police action in France than in Germany. The underlying rationales are determined by training, professional ethos (and the extent to which this is citizen-focused), national policing objectives (and definition of performance), and local police organization.