“Problem here is that according to a jury, it wasn’t.”
Wrong. THAT is the point. Juries are given instructions that differ for cops. The government chooses to hold cops to a LOWER legal standard.
I dislike David French’s TDS, but this article was spot on:
“Unlike any prior cases that could clearly establish the law for this case, at the time Vickers fired at the dog, SDC was not the intended target of an arrest or investigatory stop. Nor was he the intended target of Vickers’s shot; rather, he was accidentally hit when Vickers fired at the dog. The Supreme Court’s decision in Brower indicates that a Fourth Amendment violation depends upon intentional action on the part of the officer....
...The brief dissent was spot-on. After noting that not even qualified immunity protects the “plainly incompetent,” the dissenting judge said, “Because no competent officer would fire his weapon in the direction of a nonthreatening pet while that pet was surrounded by children, qualified immunity should not protect Officer Vickers.” This seems plainly true.
But I’d go farther. As I’ve argued before, it’s time to rethink qualified immunity entirely....”
If I shot a dog - even a threatening one, which this one was not - that was 18 inches from a kid and I hit the kid instead, would I be liable? Darn tootin! Is a cop? Nope. Because he didn’t make a considered decision to deliberate shoot and injure a child.
I carry concealed. If I ever shoot an unarmed man crawling on his knees, I’ll go to jail. No doubt. Deservedly so. I don’t have “qualified immunity”. I am required to use good judgment. Cops are not. That is the legal standard the juries are given.
“The Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Corbitt v. Vickers, handed down last week, constitutes one of the most grotesque and indefensible applications of the qualified immunity I’ve ever seen. The case involves a claim of excessive force against Michael Vickers, a deputy sheriff in Coffee County, Georgia, who shot a ten-year-old child lying on the ground, while repeatedly attempting to shoot a pet dog that wasn’t posing any threat.”
Also here: https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/officer-cleared-after-accidental-shooting/
I’m tired of cops being free to do darn near anything under protection from the government.
You keep falling back on to the point that cops are held to a different standard. I might ask why, but there is no answer to that other than they are allowed to by politicians that either create the laws or restrict the people in their decision of voting for or against a law. And with that I fall back onto the point that there are different opinions of law and how it is to be enforced.
One of the major reasons we expanded between the 1500’s to today is difference of opinion on society and it’s basis. If enough people got together and disagreed with the way a town was being run, they moved and created their own town and ran it like they wanted. Or they eliminated the source of the problem by getting rid of the person or people that were not running it the way the majority thought it should be. Then maybe the people voted out, or run out, would go somewhere and build their own town.
You’re blaming the police force for doing what they are expected and trained to do. Why aren’t you blaming the people for allowing it? History displays many examples of this: Stalin or Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Gaddafi, Amine, Hiro....the list is endless of “rulers” that gained power because the people there didn’t stop them or agreed with them. There are many examples of this country mostly related to race and religious belief with counterparts in many countries. A few from the Italian Mafia were people like Capone, Costello, Torrio, Giancana, and many more. In other countries: Vory v Zakone in Russia, the Triads all the way to today’s Yakuza and Bakuto in China, in Latin America to include Mexico, the cartels. And terrorist groups like al quida, hezbulla, taliban, isle, many more.
But the one thing consistent with them all is that they are not stopped by the people that are there. They are doing what the people want or will put off in trade for other things. And the only thing different from it is that the religious aspect of the groups comes into play. There is none of that with laws enforcement in the US.
So you’re blaming the wrong people. Don’t blame those that do what they are expected to do by the people that tell them what to do that are voted in to do so. Blame the people that vote them in. And if enough people under that control agree that those people should be taken out of power, then it will change. Otherwise, those that accomplish the expected are only doing their job.
rwood