When may police kill in self-defence? A special moral obligations argument against moral parity

That police have special moral obligations to protect others is an important moral consideration which is largely absent from discourse about the moral permissibility of police killings of civilians in self-defence. I argue that police officers, at least when acting ex officio, face a special justificatory burden such that the set of conditions under which a police officer may permissibly kill a civilian in self-defence is more tightly constrained than the set of conditions under which a civilian may kill a fellow civilian in self-defence. In other words, police officers' right to kill in self-defence is attenuated by their special moral obligation to protect others. I provide three arguments for this claim. First, police have a special obligation to protect others, even at risk to themselves. Thus, there are some situations in which, compared to a civilian, an officer must tolerate an elevated level of risk of harm to herself before she is justified in resorting to defensive harm. Second, police have a derivative obligation to minimise imposing harm on those whom they have undertaken to protect. It is a greater wrong to harm those to whom one has special moral duties. Thus, compared to the civilian, the police officer must give greater moral weight to the possibility that she is facing an innocent or non-responsible threat. The third argument rests on the view that the right to self-defence derives from the right protect oneself. I show that the special moral obligations of police officers attenuate this right and, derivatively, attenuate their right to self-defence as well.