This research is an exploratory study that aims to analyze the perceptions of citizens that may explain trust, perceived effectiveness and satisfaction with the police in Mozambique. The results of the study are relevant and, in the main, are in line with the results of the prevailing literature, demonstrating, on the one hand, the applicability in the context where the study was carried out of the theories commonly used in studies of citizens' perceptions of the police carried out in other contexts, namely the Theory of Procedural Justice. It was observed that trust in the police is predicted by the following variables: duty to obey the police, perceived efficiency of the police, perceived illegality of the police, perceived distributive justice, informal social control and age.