The SDLP has told the Independent Commission on Policing at a public meeting in Downpatrick that it expects to see "fundamental and far-reaching changes" to policing in the North.
The South Down SDLP Assembly member, Mr Eamonn O'Neill, last night told the commission chairman, Mr Chris Patten, that a service should be created which everyone could join and give their allegiance to.
Unionists and nationalists made 30 separate submissions during the meeting.
A DUP Assembly member, Mr Jim Wells, told the commission members that by the time they completed their review, the RUC would be "rendered unrecognisable".
The Independent Commission on Policing should reward the RUC for its distinction and not "review it into extinction," said Mr Wells.
Mr Terence Marks told the meeting his brother, Colm, had been shot dead by the RUC, even though it had advance knowledge of an IRA attempt to launch a mortar attack in Downpatrick in 1991.
He said the shoot-to-kill policy of the force could not swept under the carpet. "There is only one answer, disbandment", he said.
One unionist was applauded by a section of the audience when he said that the disbandment of the RUC was completely unacceptable to the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, a Catholic woman forced to flee her Belfast home after a series of republican threats was loudly applauded as she told a commission public meeting in Newtownards, Co Down, that she was "totally opposed to anything being changed in the RUC". Mrs Christine Quinn, originally from west Belfast, also told the commission that as a child she had been warned by her local priest not to speak to the RUC.
Mrs Quinn, who was speaking as Mr Chris Patten and his colleagues held a public meeting in the Queen's Hall, went on to tell an audience of over 300 people that her brother-in-law was murdered by republican paramilitaries "simply because he wore a British army uniform".
Mrs Quinn's views were reflective of an audience opposed to any alteration in the status of the RUC. The area around Newtownards has been relatively trouble-free throughout the conflict, and Mr Patten and his colleagues were left in little doubt of the strength of support for the police in the north Down area.
A local UUP Assembly member, Mr Cedric Wilson, warned Mr Patten that "the decent law-abiding citizens of Northern Ireland, regardless of class and creed, will not tolerate the RUC being interfered with".
Mr Wilson went on to say that any alteration in the current status of the police would leave the law-abiding community open to another campaign of violence.
Mr Wilson concluded by saying that the best thing Mr Patten could do was to "give the RUC a medal, then stand down the commission and go home".