Introduction—Can We Train Police Officers to Be Fair?

The challenges associated with securing and maintaining police legitimacy are ever present. Due to technological advances, everyday police actions are now subject of much quicker scrutiny by the public, accompanied by almost instantaneous evaluations of the legitimacy of those actions by a much wider audience. Hence, identifying the mechanisms and tools that enable police officers to serve professionally and operate fairly as a means of preserving police legitimacy is extremely important. Whilst research associated with police legitimacy has gathered pace, there remains some notable limitations and areas for new inquiry to be progressed. In terms of advancing understanding of all the tenets of the full legitimacy theory, significant research energy has been committed to exploring the external or mass legitimation perspective, with little consideration given to the contribution of inwards facing, or self-legitimacy dimension. Similarly, investigation of the necessary conditions that can promote a fairer and legitimate delivery of policing services has relied on a small group of enablers often examined within a general uniformed police patrol setting. This chapter advocates an alternative empirical pursuit, by drawing attention to the importance of self-legitimacy as a vital, but overlooked, component of legitimacy theory and embarking on a closer investigation of the theoretical pathway between self-legitimacy and recognition of the right to hold power by citizens. A rationale is presented to support the ambition to move away from the nucleus of established antecedents, and progress an evaluation of training delivery, as an alternative enabler for internal and external legitimacy, but within a very different field setting: the secretive, largely unexplored operational arena of Counter Terrorism Border Policing. Given this unique setting, time and space are given to explain the role, responsibilities, legal framework, and nature of the involuntary police public interactions that occur within this clandestine and highly contentious operational field setting.