I decided to make a short post, hot take style, on something that has been on my mind.

When someone is shot in a police interaction, most libertarians, myself included, will oppose statements like “well he should not have resisted the police” usually coming from the conservative side of things. Certainly a police officer should not kill you for failing to “respect mah authoritah” [sic]. Even more certainly police officers should be less prone to violence, better trained and so forth.

This is assuming a world where such things as police exist, of course. I am not covering alternatives at this point. So ancaps pipe down. The problems with police forces are many. But the alternative is not as clear cut or elegant as some think. So, for now, we have them.

We can talk of solutions like better hiring practices for police, more training, more accountability, changing police culture, or a favorite of libertarians, drastically reducing laws and so called malum prohibitum crimes in order to reduce police interactions. In fact, these are the things we should focus on.

But this is not my question at this time. All these solutions being applied, there would still be police and laws. And police will need to enforce these laws. So a question still stands: to what point can a member of the public resist the police? A law not backed, in the end, by force is no kind of law at all. If everyone decided to resist arrest in every situation and the police did not use violence, that society would be lawless. You’re under arrest! No, thanks… Well you don’t get to decide that…

Whatever society you have and form of organization, if someone breaks the rules there will be an enforcement mechanism and simply resisting / refusing to acknowledge it will not work. Be it citizen posse, cops, private security, exile. The only alternative would be the rest of society being united enough to shun offenders or something. Or kill them if they get violent. But, in general, unless one’s view of society is one with no rules, which is patently ridiculous even for anarchists, some of those rules will need to be enforced and this implies using force at some point.

So the question on my mind is: “when and how can one resist the police, if said police is the legal (and more or less legitimate as some like to make such distinctions) authority in that certain jurisdiction?” Sometimes? Always? Never? Or to differently phrase from a more conservative point of view, should you never resist the police?

Well, and this may remove my libertarian credentials, my view is you should probably not resist physically/violently. Little good will come of it. Resist verbally as much as you can. Afterwards, make the case you were unlawfully arrested. Organize a peaceful protest. Sue in a court of law. Write your representative. Or the mayor. Go on TV. But I see no situation when resisting arrest is a good idea. You will be arrested anyway and you may get hurt and this will not help the cause sufficiently to be worth it.

I personally would not do it in any case. I may argue with a cop, but if I were ever in the position to get arrested, I would go peacefully, even though I am too pretty to go to jail. Off course, when I say resist verbally as much as you can, I mean if you really must resist or really want to, a better choice, all things considered, may still be the oldie but goldie, “don’t emit a single sound without a lawyer.” But that is up to each one, and one’s mileage may vary. Myself, I would probably shut up in any arrest situation, but as Ron White used to say, some people have the right to remain silent but not the ability. 

First of all, I do not see a situation working in which people can simply ignore whatever rule or law they don’t like. I support resistance to bad laws, laws that infringe human rights. But I support peaceful resistance. You may get arrested. Scream if you want. Call attention to the problem. But physically fighting police is not, in my view, productive.

Again, this does not mean you should be killed or crippled for it. Police should know better, and restrain someone, if needed, in the least damaging way possible. But physically resisting the police will sometimes lead to bad things. It cannot be helped. And in case of very violent people, police – and private citizens for that matter – can be justified in using deadly force.

It certainly does not help the cause of police reform among those not already on board. When someone sees a person with a criminal record who was further breaking the law and was then resisting arrest violently, sympathy will certainly evaporate. A lot of police shootings were straight up murder. But a lot more were murky.

Some will say, the  what if peaceful resistance fails? And we are not talking resistance against a general tyrannical government or revolution, a different topic entirely, but resistance against specific laws and law enforcement. Violence will rarely lead to anything good and will also fail. And in my view this is sometimes said when peaceful resistance options were not exhausted. Every single time the police stops someone for no reason, document it, make it known. Mobilize large peaceful protests. Make your case. This is not easy, and I am not saying it is. But the alternative is worse.

Even in the grand scheme of things, I cannot see a way a libertarian world can be brought about with violence. This is why I don’t think I will see one in my lifetime. Any major social change, in order to be positive and successful, needs people to be convinced to get on board. If libertopia is ever implemented, it will be when a majority of people are philosophically libertarian.

Many 19th century socialists said of Marxism, and later Leninism, that it will do nothing but replace a ruling class with an even more brutal one. While I do not think socialism is either moral or possible, at least it was acknowledged by some of them that if a vast majority of the population is not on board, it will certainly be bad. And it will not be good if brought by violent revolution.  Which was proven by every single attempted implementation, followed by violent persecution of the wreckers.

This kind of change is more often bad than good. Because the most brutal will take advantage to get on top. This is a cold hard fact. So no matter how frustrated one is with the state of things – and libertarians are very frustrated – violence will rarely help and the odds are not in your favor.

I have heard this in many situations. People are desperate, people can’t take it, have reached the limit. But no matter the situation, doing something that will make things worse is a bad idea. And it is a sad indictment of culture and education that people cannot realize this and have just enough rational thought to stave off the worse emotional reaction.

It is the same with people voting for authoritarians who promise to solve their problem. A lot of those people have hard lives. But authoritarian leaders, in general, will only make them harder. So no matter how bad a situation, applying a solution that is known to not only not improve things, but possibly make it worse is not good. I heard people trying to understand people who support authoritarianism, they were desperate, and they had no choice. But they did have a choice – anything else. And, frankly, I don’t care how desperate they are. Just because you are desperate does not give you the right to use authoritarian violence on others. Sorry. Life is hard. Much, much harder on some than others. As harsh as it may sound, sometimes thems be the breaks. A nonviolent non authoritarian solution needs to be found.

As most, I feel less outrage when someone with a track record of violence is met with violence. This does not mean I am ok with it if the violence is disproportionate. That I think it should happen, if it can be avoided. That reform is not needed.

And this is an important thing to keep in mind. To vaguely paraphrase Mencken, standing for liberty and rights means standing for scoundrels. It is easy to condemn police for shooting someone not resisting. But they should be condemned for shooting someone who was resisting, as long as there was a reasonable alternative. A lot of people feel little sympathy for criminals, and often so do I, depending on the crime. But, as little sympathy as one feels, the police should not be judge and executioner. That is not the way for a society to go. Standing for the rights of criminals is crucial. But I am unsure of the wisdom of focusing too much on these cases, as a way to change minds

So that being the case, looting and burning private property, assaulting people is never, ever justified. It does not matter how hurt you feel, how near the edge, how sick and tired. The moment you start indiscriminately attacking people and property is the moment you lost my sympathy for good. Also, and this is irrelevant to my basic view but I shall mention it nonetheless, violent protest for people with criminal records who were physically resisting the police is bad marketing. As harsh as it sounds, in countries of millions of people, marketing matters. Looting and burning private property will achieve the opposite of less police violence.

So, you know, stop doing that, would be my message to both people physically resisting arrest and protesters.