So you think cops should be hesitant to do their jobs for fear of being sued? The immunity is qualified, not absolute.
The problem with qualified immunity as it is currently applied is that it is almost impossible to overcome. It doesn't matter how egregious the offense, the officer will have immunity unless there is a specific case in that particular judicial circuit, with the same exact set of particular facts, that has previously held that the actions were unlawful. It becomes a Catch-22: because there is no previous case law, the case gets thrown out - which means no case law can ever be created to establish that the conduct is illegal. Even if the conduct were established as illegal in another judicial circuit, that would not be enough to overcome qualified immunity. So a case with the same set of facts in the 5th Circuit that overcame qualified immunity would not do so in any other Circuit.
“So you think cops should be hesitant to do their jobs for fear of being sued?”
Cops provide no service to most conservatives, and in fact are an impediment to enforcement of law.
Abolish qualified immunity.
# The immunity is qualified, not absolute.
LOL. Really? It might as well be absolute. Reading between the lines on these two decisions, it would appear that basically the circumstances have to be almost identical to another published and widely known case in order for this ‘qualified’ immunity to be overcome.
Some animals are indeed more equal than others.