Posted on 03/10/2021 11:23:46 AM PST by nickcarraway
Some would say, and maybe the SCOTUS too, that it was “suicide by cop”.
He doesn't have standing?
I don’t really care. The city is responsible for hiring and training them. They need to do a better job. They can always fire the guys, and it also means they are incentivized to make sure the rest of their guys act appropriately.
This is similar to a low level employee for a company treating you really badly. You can sue the company and they can deal with the employee.
It has been demonstrated numerous times that we can not force the public masters to do the right thing or anything at all. Maybe the Answer is to AGREE with the Entire Concept of Qualified Immunity and put it to a Test. A State that Allows Ballot Measure could and should offer one up such as:
We the People do Grant to Ourselves All Special Rights, Privileges, Preferences and Immunities our Public Employee’s have been Granted
The USSC is communist now.
Responding “that’s OK, he can sue the city” shows why this continues to happen. The government drag out the case, maybe pays mild damages, and the two arresting sh!tsacks continue with their careers. If, on the other hand, they face a real possibility of losing everything they own and spending cell time with a roommate named Icepick, they’re more likely to think twice.
It is the immeasurable joys of living in a police state...
Things like this will become an everyday event during the next year...
LEO’s at every level are going to be going on a violence binge as the LEO’s transition, formally, to the American Gestapo that obunghole dreamed about...
Now *that’s* immunity.
= = =
And the shooter gets a replacement cartridge for the one he used.
Any officer with brains should realize that wearing plain clothes while on duty puts them at great risk of instant retaliation. The uniform serves as a sort of shield to others that they are conducting official business and not come to the aid of the suspect. These cops placed themselves at great should any passerby or neighbor had come to the suspect’s aid.
And the media will quite often omit details that would tend to make the cops' actions understandable.
We're at the point where no one knows what to believe.
That’s what I understand. Qualified Immunity just emerged somewhere.
Qualified immunity is a judicially created doctrine shielding public officials who are
performing discretionary functions from civil liability.
Critics of the doctrine have questioned its legal origins and have argued that
its practice has provided too much deference to the police at the expense of accountability and the erosion
of criminal suspects’ constitutional rights.
In other words, judges made it up from whole cloth. There is no legislative force behind it at all. Judges made it all up.
I always get concerned when an opinion piece only offers one side of the story. The link above goes to a copy of the original case and includes affidavits from the cops involved. It tells a slightly different story than the opinion piece does.
The officers were in plain clothes, did not identify themselves, and made no attempt to establish their identity as police officers when engaging with the victim. The officers then assaulted and subdued the victim because of a perceived lack of cooperation with their official duties, even thought those official duties were never revealed to the victim.
This, I would hope, violated department policies, therefore relieving the officers of qualified immunity.
However, since the courts extended qualified immunity to the officers, there must be a bit more to this story than we are being told.
The Founders would never have put up with this.
As others noted early in the thread this “reform” is unnecessary due to the fact that the victim can and should sue the city and PD, rather than the individual officers whose actions occurred while working for the city.
I note that this deters misbehavior by keeping the responsibility for training and disciplining officers directly on the community and local employers where it belongs, rather than opening yet another door where distant outsiders in DC - and eventually globalists can gain influence over local policing.
Obviously the goal of the so-called “reform” bill is to expand the power of centralized government, which is increasingly unrepresentative and ignorant of faraway affairs in ‘flyover country,’ at the expense of the local people who know exactly where their own officials and police live in their own communities and are best positioned to do something about alleged misbehavior and govern their own affairs accordingly.
It is a wet dream of the left to have our local police affairs ruled by Socialist International.
This needs to happen, but it won't.
Be careful what you ask for as the ultimate goal is to have internationally controlled police.
They are trying to do this in New Mexico. The way the bill is written, all government employees AND people who serve as volunteers on government boards would have qualified immunity removed.
So I voluntarily serve on a Public Improvement Board. No compensation. The bill would allow citizens to sue me personally for any trumped up reason. The bill protects those who bring suit - they cannot be held responsible for legal fees even if the case is dismissed or they lose. I would be responsible for my own legal defense.
For instance...there is a tree that is interfering with the utilities it is planted on and it needs to be removed. The resident that lives next door to this public area has their yard shaded by the tree. The tree is removed and the resident files suit that we removed the tree because they are black (or gay, or Jewish, or whatever). They name all of the board members as plaintiffs. We now have to hire lawyers to protect ourselves. We have been told such a defense would cost between $20K and $30K.
Sometimes qualified immunity is a good thing.
Not really. Without qualified immunity any cop who offended a rich person, or someone with a group backing them, or perhaps just demented, could be sued and resued into penury. But the SC has taken the position that even if the trial court finds the officer did wrong, the officer is entitled to qualified immunity unless they had notice, by way of a prior case involving practically the same facts, that their acts were wrong.
So the next cop who does exactly this will not be entitled to immunity -- assuming the lower courts did not find that these cops acted appropriately. But by allowing qualified immunity to to cover so many patently bad acts, and not balanced the need to protect good cops with the rights of those whom bad cops abuse, the SC has made it very likely that Congress will pass a bill overcorrects in the other direction.
That also tends to be part for the course where police shootings are involved.
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