People will not "queue up like sheep" to join a new policing service if they are not convinced it really does present a new beginning to policing in the North, the Sinn Fein spokeswoman on policing, Ms Bairbre de Brun, told a community conference in Belfast.
"Sinn Fein is not anti-police, but we want to be sure there will be a new beginning with a new service that serves our constituents impartially and effectively. What we don't want is the RUC repackaged under a different name," Ms de Brun told participants at the conference, entitled "Policing the Future".
Sinn Fein was still in consultation as to its official position on the Patten report, Ms de Brun said. But she stressed that the party "utterly and totally" supported the idea of a new police service. The nationalist community demanded and deserved nothing less, she added.
One could not help but see a contradiction between the Patten report's emphasis on human rights and community policing and its upholding of current emergency legislation and the use of plastic bullets, Ms de Brun said.
Sinn Fein had no intention of "cherry-picking" the report. "We are looking at Patten as a complete package. What we are interested in is whether the report as a whole has the potential to achieve a fair and representative policing service," she said.
The report must not be watered down as a reward to unionists. "We must get away from the reality that the police belongs to only one side of the community. We are entitled to a police service that treats everybody like a human being and feels it is accountable to the community as a whole, not just to the part that shares its beliefs," she said.
Another of the conference's speakers, US Senator Tom Hayden, said he was disturbed by some aspects of the Patten report. "How can you take the gun out of Irish politics if you can't take plastic bullets out of the hands of the RUC?" he asked.
An SDLP councillor, Ms Margaret Walsh, said both communities had moved on from their diametrically opposed stances of "Disband the RUC" and "Hands off the RUC".
"We now need to take up the challenge of implementing Patten," she added.
The SDLP will publish a comprehensive response document to the Patten report next week.