The Police Can Lie to You: A Philosophy Professor and Former FBI Agent Discusses

Join Luke William Hunt—a philosophy professor and former FBI Special Agent—for a conversation about the ethics of police deception and dishonesty. Author of the recent book, Police Deception and Dishonesty -- The Logic of Lying, Hunt argues that many of our assumptions about policing and security are unjustified. Through a rich discussion of literature and case studies, he’ll show compelling reasons to think that the police's widespread use of proactive deception and dishonesty is inconsistent with fundamental norms of political morality--especially norms regarding fraud and the rule of law. Although there are times and places for dishonesty and deception in policing, Hunt will illustrate why those times and places should be much more limited than current practices suggest.

Luke William Hunt is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama, where he teaches in the department's Jurisprudence Track. After graduating from law school, he was a law clerk for a federal judge in Virginia. He then worked as an FBI Special Agent in Virginia and Washington, D.C., followed by his doctoral work in philosophy at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Retrieval of Liberalism in Policing (Oxford, 2019), The Police Identity Crisis: Hero, Warrior, Guardian, Algorithm (Routledge, 2021), and Police Deception and Dishonesty: The Logic of Lying (Oxford, 2024).