The Infliction of Harm to Police Officers during Political Protests

• In Event: Rights, Obligations, and Authority

Abstract

Political protests frequently involve violent confrontations between demonstrators and law enforcement officers. Research on violence during protests suggests that police officers on the ground sometimes play a significant role in initiating or escalating such violent confrontations with demonstrators.

In liberal democracies, demonstrators are almost systematically condemned by authorities and mainstream media, while generally inciting negative reactions among the public, when they use violence in confronting the police. However, most people—and political theorists among them—generally consider that sociopolitical circumstances characterized by severe and entrenched injustices and oppression may provide valid moral reasons for political resistance, most prominently to the state and those who act as its agents or representatives.

What about harm inflicted by protesters to police officers during protests? Could there be reasons that would make it justified for demonstrators to use self-defense against police officers that initiate violence?

This paper investigates the legitimacy of politically motivated harm against police officers in cases of violent clashes between protesters and police officers during political protests. I more precisely argue that police officers have special moral obligations, and this special status makes them potentially liable to being harmed in lieu of the state.

This argument builds on the notion that there is a moral asymmetry between police officers and private citizens which plays a central justificationary role: police officers are legitimate targets for harm inflicted during political protests precisely because they are not the moral equals of ordinary citizens but official representatives of the state.

Finally, I show how this argument is constrained by specific moral considerations, namely the fact (1) that demonstrators targeting police officers must have no obligation to obey the law; (2) that the protest in which those individuals participate must be motivated by strictly political reasons; and (3) that the harm inflicted to police officers in the context of this particular protest must be proportional to the requirement of protesters’ political purpose.

The paper makes a central normative contribution to theories of political resistance, political violence, and defensive ethics.

Author

• Alexis Bibeau-Gagnon, University of Virginia