Can you legally defend yourself against an attacking police officer? If a police officer physically attacks you, with or without intent to arrest, can you legally defend yourself? Assume that the police officer punches/kicks/grabs first, and you are not guilty of any crime before the attack. To what extend can you do so?
The General Rule In practice, the only time when self-defense against a police officer is legal is when you do not know and have no reasonable way that you could have known that the person attacking you is a police officer. (And arguably, a police officer acting in an official capacity in furtherance of his or her duties, rather than in a personal capacity as an individual.) For example, if the police do a no knock raid in the dark of night, and don't announce themselves, and you shoot police officers reasonably believing them to be home invasion burglars, you would not have criminal or civil liability for doing so. A similar valid self-defense claim might arise when someone has an objectively reasonable reason to think that someone claiming to be a police officer is really just a criminal impersonating a police officer, even if that belief is, in fact, mistaken. In almost all other circumstances, you need to submit to the officers, and you are pretty much required by law to bear the risk that excessive force by the officer will harm you. If you don't, you will probably be guilty of the crime of resisting arrest and will not be entitled to a self-defense defense. The fact that you are not actually guilty of a crime is irrelevant. This is often the case and police officers are not omniscient. If the officer lacked probable cause for an arrest (which there is often no way that the person being arrested or attacked can know at the time), the remedy is a civil rights suit after the fact, not self-defense. In theory, there might be other isolated circumstances where self-defense against a police officer is legal, but they involve fact patterns so quirky that they would almost never happen in real life, or would almost never be possible to prove in a manner that the courts would believe. Officer Liability For Harming Someone Legitimately Acting In Self Defense Whether the officers had civil liability to you if you were harmed by the officers while exercising your right to self-defense would depend upon their state of mind, even if you were rightfully using self-defense. For example, a U.S. Supreme Court case decided in January of 2017 (White v. Pauly) involved this fact pattern. In White v. Pauly an officer arrived late on the scene and had no reason to believe that the officers who arrived there before him and were being shot at by citizens in a house that they were approaching, lacked probable cause, or had not announced themselves. The court held that as a result, he had no civil liability to a citizen he shot, even if the person who the late arriving officer shot while that citizen was shooting back at the police officers on the scene was actually engaging in good faith self-defense. The citizen's self-defense in the case had a valid defense to criminal or civil liability for firing on the officers, because the citizen shooting back didn't actually know that the people approaching his house were police officers. But, because the late arriving officer reasonably believed under the circumstances that the citizen had no right to engage in self-defense, because he thought that the early arriving officers had probable cause and had announced themselves, the late arriving officer had no civil liability to the citizens he shot.
Legally, they can kick you out for any reason that isn't illegal discrimination. They can't kick you out for being black. They also can't kick you out for being white. But they can kick you out for not liking your face. Now the question is: Who can kick you out? The store owner obviously can. Anyone who is given the authority by the store owner can. Actually, anyone with the apparent authority can kick you out. However, everyone other than the store owner has been hired to work towards making profits. If throwing you out is bad for business, then whoever did it would have to answer to the store owner. So the ex-friend can't go to court for throwing you out, but they might get into trouble with their boss about it. PS. I interpreted "kicking out" as saying "Please leave our premises. If you don't leave then you will be trespassing and I will call the police", not actually kicking the person with your foot which would be most likely assault.
Are you required to comply with a police officer's order to put your baby down in an uncertain situation and allow yourself to be handcuffed? Of course. If holding a baby could immunize people against arrest, every criminal would have a baby around whenever possible. Similarly, suppose an officer legitimately fears for his or her life or safety, or the lives or safety of others, on the basis of a suspicion that someone carrying a baby is about to produce a weapon and use it against someone. Courts, at least in the US, give wide and explicit deference to police officers in stressful situations like that, and they recognize that even if, in hindsight, it is perfectly clear that there was no danger, the officer must be allowed the leeway to act on his or her suspicions in case they are correct. The officer will of course have some obligations to ensure the welfare of the child after separation from the adult, but the only immediate recourse the adult has is to appeal to the officer directly, or perhaps the officer's supervisor if he or she is available. Any other enforcement of the officer's obligation will have to take place in the courts after the fact.
Even if you had grounds for a lawsuit, you could not make it come out of the officer’s pocket. Under Chapter 4.64 of the Seattle Code, the City of Seattle is generally required to defend and indemnify city employees who are sued for doing their job. If you sue a police officer, the city pays his lawyer; if you win or if the city decides your claim is legitimate, the city pays whatever damages there were. The provision does not cover “claims and/or litigation arising from any dishonest, fraudulent, criminal or malicious acts or omissions of officers or employees of the City,” but that requires a lot more than “I wasn’t parked illegally,” and in any event you cannot force that issue -— only the city can. That’s between the officer and the city, and has nothing to do with you. This provision is pretty common in employment, including government employment. If I’m working for you and am acting in good faith, doing things for your benefit under your instructions, it’s only fair for you to shoulder the costs if I mess up. When it comes to government employees (whose job often makes people very angry at them), indemnification is extremely common. If police officers faced the risk of financial ruin for innocent mistakes, it’d be very hard to find anyone willing to do the job.
An act in self defense is legal (StGB §32): &quot;(1) Whoever commits an act in self-defence does not act unlawfully&quot;. However, &quot;(2)'Self-defence' means any defensive action which is necessary to avert a present unlawful attack on oneself or another&quot; – removing a trespasser is not necessary to avert an unlawful attack. This does not apply to removing an annoying person. Under §223, physically assaulting a person is a punishable offense. Pushing a person is one form of assault (so is punching them or pummeling them, perhaps a more severe form depending on the physical damage done). However, the response is also criminal because it goes past that which is necessary to avert the assault (a push is not a license to commit mayhem). Under §§33-35 there are defenses for excessive self-defense (&quot;Whoever exceeds the limits of self-defence due to confusion, fear or fright incurs no penalty&quot;), which don't seem applicable in this situation (rage is not the same as fright).
Self-Defense is an active Defense for Homicide (note, this is the legal term for taking a life. Criminal Homicide and Justified Homicide are two subsets of Homicide and are denoted by illegal actions and legal actions. Homicide as a result of Self-Defense is a Justified Homicide, regardless of the weapon, so long as it was applied with the minimal amount of force required to stop the criminal harm to oneself). Suppose you use a taser and the current causes the attacker to go into cardiac arrest and die. Your intention in using the taser was to stop the criminal from injuring yourself, your property, or another person or their property (defense of others). Even though the Taser is non-leathal, it's more like less lethal. Death by Taser is uncommon, but not impossible or rare. It would be handled as a defensive use of a weapon (same as if the attacker was killed by a gun) and processed as such. Pennsylvania is a Stand Your Ground State, meaning that in a public place, you do not have a duty to flee if your attacker approaches you in a public place, you do not have to prove that you could not flee in order to claim self-defense. However, if you pull a weapon and your attacker decides to flee, you can not give chase and kill him upon capture. You also need to have a reasonable expectation that the attacker is about to use deadly force (this normally means having sight of the weapon or what would reasonably look like a weapon i.e. a realistic toy gun without the orange safety cap would be reasonable). You also cannot claim self-defense if you were engaged in another crime when the attacker approached you (i.e. If you rob the Krusty Krab and the Hash Slinging Slasher approaches you with a knife, sucks to be you cause you don't have a right to be in the Krusty Krab after closing.).
If A reasonably suspects that B committed a felony, A may arrest B, which means that A may also use reasonable force to detain B. They can also arrest for a misdemeanor committed in their presence, if it constituted a breach of peace. It is, of course, up to A to be correct that the act is a felony or a breach of peace, and to know what is reasonable force. If your arrest is in fact not lawful, you may be sued (battery or false imprisonment) or prosecuted (battery or unlawful imprisonment). Punching a person in the shoulder is the felony of battery, and direct observation creates highly reasonable suspicion. In such circumstances, anyone could have arrested the child. Unlike a police arrest, a citizen is not required to Mirandize an arrested suspect. This memo summarizes citizens arrest law including case law for Washington state. The right to perform citizen's arrest is statutorily recognized as a defense under RCW 9A.16.020 The use, attempt, or offer to use force upon or toward the person of another is not unlawful in the following cases: ...(2) Whenever necessarily used by a person arresting one who has committed a felony and delivering him or her to a public officer competent to receive him or her into custody
To provide an initial answer, without getting to the specific of the 51 statutory standards for self-defense in U.S. states and the exact Canadian standard, as applied to your examples, I'll make some general observations: Self-defense is a justification for doing something that would otherwise be illegal (intentionally using force against someone else). Self-defense justifications include a sense of proportionality. It isn't proper to use more force than is reasonably necessary to achieve the defensive objective. There are basically two levels of self-defensive force: Deadly Force and Non-Deadly Force. Preventing some crimes and harms is statutorily justified to do using deadly force (e.g. to prevent a murder). To prevent other crimes and harms statutes only justify the use of non-deadly force (e.g. to prevent shoplifting). The exact list of crimes in each category varies somewhat. Historically, for example, there have been some U.S. states that have authorized the use of deadly force to prevent a rape that does not put the life of the victim at risk, and others that have not authorized the use of deadly force for that purpose (I don't know if that is still the case). Typically, law enforcement officers are also authorized to use deadly force in some circumstances in which a non-deputized civilian could not. As a practical matter, a use of force that causes death is presumptively considered to be deadly force, even if the means used are not inherently deadly in all circumstances. Meanwhile, a use of force involving the use of a &quot;deadly weapon&quot; such as a firearm, is presumptively considered to be deadly force, even if it doesn't actually kill someone. But both of these &quot;presumptions&quot; (and I am using that term loosely in this answer, rather than with its precise legal meaning), can be overcome with relevant evidence. Mildly shoving someone with hemophilia (or tossing a dish full of peanuts in the face of someone with a severe peanut allergy), without knowing that this person suffers from this condition, is not a use of deadly force within the meaning of laws justifying self-defense, even if it actually ends up causing their death. Similarly, proving that you intended to and did, shoot out the tires of someone's car, or shot their foot, instead of shooting to kill, would not always constitute a use of deadly force for purposes of statutes justifying the use of force in self-defense. Getting to the specifics of the question, the majority rule would be that the use of deadly force is justified in most circumstances to prevent a home invasion burglar from harming you or other people in the residence, and to repel the home invasion burglar from the residence, although some jurisdictions would qualify this in one respect or another. The case that the use of deadly force is justified would be stronger if the home invasion burglar was armed than if he was not, and would be stronger if the homeowner was not physically competent enough to be confident of an ability to dispatch the invader in a non-deadly manner. If deadly force was justified in that circumstance, it wouldn't really matter how you killed him, nor would it matter that you intended to kill him to defense your home and the people in your home. If the law only authorized the use of non-deadly force in the circumstances, for example, because the burglar had seized an envelope full of cash and was fleeing the house, so you were really only using force to protect your property, rather than to protect your home or the safety of the people in it, at that point, then the analysis would get tougher. If you intended to kill the fleeing thief in circumstances when only non-deadly force was authorized, the weapon you used wouldn't matter. You intended to use deadly force, the force you used caused the intended death, and you did those things even though the law didn't authorize you to do so in those circumstances. If you didn't intend to kill the fleeing thief in circumstances when only non-deadly force was authorized, but you ended up killing him anyway (so that you didn't have a prohibited intent behind your actions), then the question would be whether your intent and belief that your actions would not kill him was reasonable under the circumstances. If you caused his death with your bare hands, or with a less lethal weapon (in truth, there is no such thing as a non-lethal weapon), your belief that the thief wouldn't die from your use of force would be more likely to be seen as reasonable. If you caused his death with a lethal weapon, your belief that the thief wouldn't die from your use of force would be less likely to be seen as reasonable. If the jury (or a judge in bench trial) didn't believe you were reasonable in your use of force which you didn't intend to be deadly, then the jury (or judge as the case might be) would not allow a self-defense argument to prevent them from convicting you of some kind of homicide crime. So you would probably be convicted of some form of homicide (perhaps heat of passion manslaughter), although you might still not have the requisite intent for first degree murder in circumstances like that (so that your self-defense argument might end up providing you with an incomplete defense).