If the State is, as it should be, the holder of the “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force”, as sociologist Max Weber wrote in 1919, “legitimate violence”, the coercion authorized and exercised by state institutions such as the police and the Armed Forces, depend on social acceptance. In other words, the trust of citizens in the goodness of their actions and in strict compliance with the law by those who enforce it.
The police themselves have a fundamental role in legitimizing themselves within society. The PSP decided to reinforce psychological tests to screen for radical and aggressive attitudes and, as a result, excluded 85 candidate agents from last year’s competition. It is important that the PSP does not even provide training or accept into its ranks citizens who are more predisposed to testing the limits of the law, but it is even more crucial that periodic psychological assessments exist throughout the career of agents already allocated to police stations, especially after incidents of use of a service weapon or other traumatic events from a physical and psychological point of view.
A final reflection on the greater publicity, today, of these cases of violence or alleged abuses of authority. That doesn’t mean the number of candidates for the PSP has fallen. On the contrary.
This year, more than 4,000 people applied for the PSP Agent Training Course, the highest number in the last five years and an increase of 18% in relation to 2025. A clear sign that, increasingly, the PSP is an appealing professional outlet for young Portuguese people, but also a warning of redoubled caution for those who have the duty and responsibility not to accept into their ranks citizens who want to take over the police forces to serve political agendas, religious or racial. Or, simply, anyone who – despite not having any of these guidelines – is incapable of understanding the ethical principles of the profession and tends to dehumanize the target of their police action.
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