Police Legitimacy and Policing Public Protest

Abstract

This paper explores police legitimacy in the context of protest policing. The overarching aim is to address how the police might enhance their legitimacy in a protest context. I draw from Beetham’s (1991) proposition that political legitimacy requires alignment between shared public values and institutional standards, and propose a means of bridging the two sets of principles. I suggest that procedural justice theory and the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) of crowd behaviour allow us to understand the public values that drive police legitimacy in both a general and protest context, namely an overriding concern for fair and respectful process. Next I argue that these values should be institutionally substantiated by a human rights framework. This allows us to buttress policing principles premised on public values with a normative framework and thus meet the criterion for legitimacy according to Beetham’s model. The compatibility between these three singular narratives makes a powerful and coherent argument for protest policing premised upon fairness and respect. I suggest that this style of policing is more likely to sustain public order and allows us to reconcile protester objectives - the ability and right to protest - with key policing objectives, including public order and public safety.

Keywords: police, legitimacy, political protest, trust, confidence, criminal justice