The violence of colonial Natal did not limit itself to the prisons systems of the nineteenth century but could occur anywhere, even on the dusty roads outsider of Pietermaritzburg. Such was the case in April 1885 when Joseph Thomas and his fiancé Laranna, recent settlers to the colony, were attacked and beaten without warning by four ‘native police’ and a resident magistrate. So brutal were the blows by the police that Laranna screamed ‘don’t kill him, don’t kill him’ to the attackers. This chapter argues such violence experienced and implemented by the Natal Police was strikingly quotidian throughout the nineteenth century and occurred in conjunction with the formation of Natal’s police institutions. It included not only violence performed by and against the African police but also incidents of violence where African police were present or suspected as connected to violent crimes. This chapter will examine a broad set of categories of violence, including violence perpetuated by the police with the dreaded knobkerrie (eliciting debates over its use), broader incidents of police brutality (often against the Black population of the colony), assaults or potential assaults against women (notably of the indigenous population), attacks against ‘civilised’ Africans by the police (illustrating the complex links between violence and the European civilizing mission), and finally, attacks against the police themselves from the white and Black segments of the population. All of these cases highlight violence in Natal as a cultural norm and part of the imperial social life that permeated the colony throughout this period.