Posted on 08/01/2024 8:52:25 PM PDT by SteveinSATX
Is police immunity a battle worth having? I back the blue 100% but we all know the po po do cross the lines sometimes.
That's one question DJT did not have a good answer for imo during the Black Journalists QnA session...
Why haven’t those so-called journalists asked Biden or Harris about it? Why is Trump singled out over this? Federal, State, City, County, Town, Village, etc., all have their own police agencies that are run by those government entities. Each has its own internal disciplinary system to deal with uniform staff misconduct, especially if they are unionized.
The police and any public officer should enjoy qualified immunity for acts committed in accord with their duties. When they step outside of those duties (like abusing constitutional rights) they should lose it and be personally liable.
Policing would change rapidly if officers suffered a personal consequence for abuse of citizens. Make them carry professional insurance. Those who have too many claims may become uninsurable… and that means that won’t be able to simply move to a new dept to continue the abuse.
The current way of doing things invites abuse when bad actors don’t suffer for their wrongdoing. Pretty much every current lawsuit verdict is paid by the very citizens whose rights were violated.
Completely agree. But I wonder if the officer in question would qualify for immunity under Trump policies. What is the threshold?
The police are a reflection of the citizenry. An apathetic citizenry that doesn’t pay attention to their government or politicians will get corrupt cops. The way to ensure good policing is for people of good moral character to run for office or take part in government functions that affect policing. Every thing else is just a distraction.
I am not trying to single him out per se, but it is a new platform he’s introduced that I and others have picked up on and it does raise a few questions...
It was stupidity. Cops are most certainly NOT immune from prosecution. Cops are constantly arrested and convicted in these cases. Chauvin is a recent example. Fuhrman is another. They are everywhere.
The immunity is for civil cases.
Look at the case the dimwit at the NABJ convention brought up.
Look at Chauvin. Who would you rather sue in civil court? A cop who is maybe one paycheck ahead and has an ex-wife and a mortgage? Or the City of Minneapolis or Chicago.
Ending immunity so you can sue the the cop is retarded when you can sue the city.
And from a social responsibility point of view. If a City or County is on the hook, they work much harder to hire and better train cops. If all of the liability flows to the individual cop, the city cares less about who they hire.
But lets end this BS that cops are immune from prosecution. It simply is not true.
The most common problem is that errant cops know ways to skirt law and policy that are hard to detect and prove. In addition, judges and juries tend to give police the benefit of the doubt, often unwisely.
This is why it is important to have police body cams, car cams, and gun cams, the routine recording of police actions and interrogations, and tamper-proof archiving of the results. This make the police and the public more accountable. In addition, police need better employment screening and training.
All that is coming, gradually, as the technology and use in practice are perfected and institutional resistance is worn down. A generation from now, it is plausible to hope that policing will be more reliable, effective, and honest than it is today.
Mixed feelings as it is abused 99% of the time in my opinion. If they are following orders, under direct supervision, yes, but never for a cop out in his or her own. Maybe condition it to having camera or something to weed out bad cops.
Example: Police arrest the wrong guy. They do not rough the guy up, they read him his rights, they do a fingerprint, check out his story, find out they have the wrong person and let him go. They made a mistake but they did the rest of their job properly.
Counter Example: Police arrest the wrong guy. They rough him up, haul him in, do not bother to take his prints, do not check his story and when he insists that he is someone else, lock him up in a nut house for years where he is subjected to forced treatment for delusions of... being himself. They made a mistake and then went totally off the rails.
Other Example: Guy and his dad have an argument. Guy thinks Dad left the house with the dog. A few hours later guy realizes Dad is not back but the dog is. Guy called police and reports his father missing. Police jump to the conclusion that Guy murdered his Dad and oh how they run with it. Guy is interrogated for hours, they tell him they found his dad's body, they refuse to give him his medicine, they tell him that they are going to kill his dog. Guy goes off the edge and confesses. Later tries to hang himself in his cell. Obviously guilty! Except...... Dad is alive. Dad took a walk to cool off and decided to hop a bus and go visit his daughter. Once again, they started with a mistake, assuming that it was a murder rather then an elderly man going out for a walk and taking a fall or something reasonable like that, and then went totally off the rails.
Qualified Immunity is fine for honest mistakes. But it has to end when the police go totally bonkers. And sadly, not only do the police go bonkers on occasion they are rarely punished for it. And if they do leave that job they are hired some place else. And they do not change. Why should they? There is no down side.
There are plenty of consequences. The idea there isn’t is a fiction pushed by Kamala, BLM, AOC and the idiot from the NABJ.
When cops screw up, especially with malice and outside the law, they are prosecuted on state charges, and federal civil rights violations... or both. The entity they work for is then sued civilly. And neither of these are rare.
But keep fighting for the right to go after some loser with 2500 in his checking account, a 10 year old pickup and an underwater mortgage.
What this is really about is making NOBODY want to be a cop by making them have to buy malpractice insurance like a doctor. That will hurry along the demise of policing and let the anarchy get worse. And when city police finally collapse (as is the plan) we will get a national police force under Homeland Security.
This immunity debate is a BLM/Squad farce.
I wasn't referring to you, but to the media who asks Trump questions about issues they never ask RATS about. They go out of their way to relate every topic they accost him over, to the issue of racism. To the left...the police are racist. It doesn't matter that there are law enforcement officers in this country from just about every ethnic and religious group in the world.
“Ending immunity so you can sue the the cop is retarded when you can sue the city.”
That takes way too much time and money for the average citizen especially when internal investigations so often find no wrongdoing by the PD.
Also it should be forfeiture of immunity for an officer who turns off or mutes a bodycam.
In the second example I gave all three of the police officers are still employed by the same department. The other retired with a full pension.
And that is a problem.
Maybe if the officers in question would have to worry about losing say, half of his pension he might have behaved differently.
So, every LEO should be accompanied by a supervisor at all times?
You'd need so many supes that the contrast between a supe and front line cop would be a distinction without a difference.
If you think the police are ham-strung now (and you very well may not, especially if you live in a low crime area), imagine the logistical nightmare, and lack of policing your plan would unleash on the law-abiding public.
End sovereign immunity for violation of rights, end asset forfeiture and make police follow the laws the rest of us have to. Police cover for police, tha5bwhole thin blue line stuff on steroids.
Qualified immunity MUST be eliminated, and ALL judgements against police officers should be paid from the department’s Retirement Fund, not the public purse.
When EVERY officer pays a price for allowing the “bad” ones to continue in the job, things will change, RAPIDLY.
Yeah, most cops are good. That’s why so many turn away when they see the bad ones committing crimes. Ask Serpico how that went for him!
Either way, I guess I'm suggesting very limited qualified immunity. Make the officers responsible for their action, break that thin blue line that hides bad behavior, but protect officers when appropriate.
And courts should help by disqualifying officers with history of bad actions and lying. That should remove their credibility in the future, forcing departments to fire them. Maybe that alone would help as we've seen with some situations that the officers had history and were excused from accountability, still trusted, etc. Break that and maybe those bad cops will be gone quickly.
if cops got a reduced pension because of bad transactions, the cops would clean up their act..
Too many losers in America have become comfortable with the idea that the police are supposed to be some kind of armed security force for a citizenry that is incapable of protecting itself. That kind of thinking has no place in a free society.
The real job of a police officer is to arrest an accused criminal so he/she can be prosecuted under a constitutional process in a court of law — so justice is rendered properly instead of at the hands of armed citizens. That’s it.
When I relocated my home and business during the COVID hysteria, I made sure I moved to a rural township with no police department. We simply don’t need it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.