Police actions and inactions remain the most controversial and ill-defined events in the criminal justice system. This article explains that some suspects who become involved in police–citizen violence were actually the initiator(s) and/or active participants in the events that resulted in their being defensively victimised by police. The issue here is whether the suspect knew the consequences of resisting arrest and was a catalyst for the violence that occurred during the police–citizen encounter. This article argues that attaching the sympathetic quality of innocence to an aggressive suspect overpowered by police allows us to blame the police for doing their job. The article proposes a formal pre-arrest announcement to remind suspects that their behaviour from a certain point onwards has consequences. Although there are some circumstances where people may truly be innocent victims of police violence, the evidence shows that most ‘victims’ of police violence are not innocent victims but rather apprehended initiators or full participants in police–citizen violent activity.
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