Physical punishment, harassment and sacrifice. On the legitimacy of police violence

Abstract

In these pages we analyze the articulation between some forms of police violence and their legitimacy. Our interest is to reflect on how the police builds legitimacies. With this purpose, we wonder if the criteria of legitimacy was altered during the pandemic. Without already finding an answer to this question, we will debate on how some forms of police violence -physical punishment and harassment- are tied, or not, with the representations of police work - the sacrifice-. The challenge is to analyze manifestations of police violence and reflect on how legitimacy is built, as well as its changes and moral basis.