The Independent Commission on Policing heard allegations of RUC ill-treatment of nationalists and demands that the force be disbanded when it visited Cross maglen in south Armagh yesterday.
The Commission's impartiality was also questioned by some speakers who complained that one of its members, Mr Peter Smith, a QC in Northern Ireland, had represented two British soldiers charged in connection with the killing of a local man, Mr Fergal Caraher. Mr Caraher, an unarmed civilian, was shot dead eight years ago. The soldiers were acquitted.
During yesterday's meeting, his widow, Margaret, said she found it unsettling that Mr Smith was on the Commission.
The Commission chairman, the former Hong Kong governor Mr Chris Patten, said at the end of the meeting that it was wrong for anyone to associate lawyers with the alleged actions of their clients.
Three members of the Commission were at yesterday's public meeting - Mr Patten, Dr Maurice Hayes and Dr Gerald Lynch. It is the second time members of the Commission have visited Crossmaglen. The first visit was for an unofficial meeting, attended by around 200, in the Crossmaglen Rangers' hall following an invitation from the community. Yesterday's meeting was the Commission's formal hearing and was a more low-key affair. It was held in the town library and around 100 people attended. There was a strong Sinn Fein presence. Dissident republicans boycotted the meeting, saying they wished to give it no credibility.
Ms Kay Hughes said her family had been harassed regularly by the RUC. Her father had been allegedly "tied up and bound" in his own laneway, her mother and sisters sexually harassed, their home damaged during raids and the family dog beaten by police "because they didn't like him barking".
Ms Hughes said she was arrested five years ago when she was a student nurse at Belfast City Hospital. She said the RUC told her they didn't want anyone from her area working in a loyalist district because she represented a security threat and "they didn't want someone like me nursing them or their families".
She claimed they told her they would arrange to have her killed by loyalists if she didn't leave the job. They allegedly said they knew where she parked her car and the times of her shifts.
She lodged a formal complaint about the alleged incident and believed that if she hadn't done this she would have been killed.
Another woman, Ms Maeve Hughes, said her wedding car was stopped by the RUC on the way to the reception and the vehicle and driver searched. The wedding party faced abusive comments from officers, she said,
Ms Joanne Caraher said her family was constantly harassed by police and on one occasion their home was searched eight times in six weeks. When raiding her home, the RUC would laugh at a picture of her dead brother Fergal.
A local shopkeeper, Mr Oliver Ogle, said the RUC had threatened to plant incendiaries in his shop after he asked them to leave his premises.
SDLP Assembly member Mr John Fee said local people had experienced "very sharp, very intensive, very harsh policing" with officers using the emergency powers "with relish". He said the Patten Commission faced the challenge of establishing a new police service which the men and women of south Armagh would feel proud to join.