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And Qualified Immunity protects them from civil action.

• rootusrootus 6y ago
  As a concept qualified immunity makes sense. The police are expected to do things which would get any other citizen sued or put in jail. So a certain amount of immunity for these actions makes perfect sense. The problem is that it has become an impenetrable shield behind which clear wrongdoing goes unpunished. We probably don't want to eliminate qualified immunity, but we need to drastically increase accountability so it isn't abused.
  • ashtonkem 6y ago
    You’ve got QI kind of backwards. QI was never meant to alter what cops were allowed to do, it was supposed to shield them from nuisance suits. Think less “cops killing people” and more “suing the clerk over a denied license”. The bounds of acceptable police force is set by law and department policy, not QI. Before QI the police were still legally allowed to arrest people, after all. The problem is that QI rulings are insanely narrow, to the point where minor differences get cops off scot free. The differences can be as minor as the difference between setting dogs on a surrendering suspect in a “wooded creek” vs. in a “shrubby ditch”. And every single time this happens, a specific precedent is denied for future incidents.