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American police don’t feel institutionally above the law, for all intents and purposes they are. Qualified immunity, a doctrine made up out of whole cloth by th

American police don’t feel institutionally above the law, for all intents and purposes they are. Qualified immunity, a doctrine made up out of whole cloth by the courts, means that cops often can’t be prosecuted or even sued for the most egregious of conduct. And the lengths the courts will go to protect cops are ridiculous, to the point where the courts have upheld the idea that a cop didn’t know that attacking a surrendering suspect in a “grassy ditch” was illegal, even though doing the same thing in a wooded area had precedent. And of course, since the cop was let off the hook, no new precedent was made. And even when cops do finally cross the line, they just move towns or states and get a new job. Police unions have fought long and hard to avoid even the slightest forms of accountability; in most states being fired for cause isn’t enough to get your license pulled. This protection for bad cops comes at the cost of us all, both in terms of settlements paid by our money, and by unnecessary deaths inflicted on the poor and vulnerable by the state.

gabereiser 6y ago
^ This. Cops aren’t your friends. They can and will use anything you say against you, never for you, in a court of law. I’m not saying we don’t need them. I’m saying they aren’t your friend. Never underestimate the ability of a cop to twist the truth. In court, a cop has the fullest faith of the courts even if they don’t show up. Defending yourself against what a cop says happened is almost impossible. It can be done though.
- wtetzner 6y ago
  > I’m not saying we don’t need them We need them, but we also need them to be held accountable for their actions.
  - gabereiser 6y ago
    Absolutely
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I have never seen a convincing argument that we don’t need cops, courts, and prisons (not that you’re making that argument). Every society seems to have them, and I have a very hard time imagining a society that wouldn’t lock up someone like, say, Anders Breivik. That being said, it’s pretty obvious that the American justice system is unnecessarily brutal and inefficient. We lock up a huge percentage of our population and have a pretty high recidivism rate compared to our peer nations. Well short of “defunding the police”, we desperately need to rethink the scope and responsibilities of our criminal justice system, and rethink the relationship between police and the citizens of this country.
  - gabereiser 6y ago
    We absolutely need cops, courts, prisons, jails and all that. The issue I have is with how they are deployed as tools to correct societies behavior. The way the USA uses them, it doesn't work and only serves to suppress a group of minorities from becoming participants nor leaders in society. Jail is supposed to be for those who did wrong and need a "timeout" so to speak. A wake up call or reality check on their behavior. Prison is more longer term rehabilitation. Problem is, our society's tolerance of crime and sentences for said crimes lands people in jail more often than not. Difference being jail sentences are up to a year, prison year+. Not to mention the absurd bias towards minorities in how we police, how we judge, etc. to fill said jails and prisons which are increasingly becoming For-Profit by leasing prison workforce labor out at 1890s labor costs of $0.27/day. It's legalized slavery.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      Legalized slavery? Enslaving prisoners was never illegal in the US.
tiahura 6y ago
Qualified immunity, a doctrine made up out of whole cloth by the courts, means that cops often can’t be prosecuted or even sued for the most egregious of conduct. Qualified immunity has nothing to do with criminal liability, it is a civil affirmative defense and a sound one. Essentially, it provides personal protection for ordinary negligence. When an employee at Pottery Barn drops a plate, we don't deduct it from their paycheck. If we did, no one would work there.
- _jal 6y ago
  That's a lovely theory which somehow manages to ignore the industrial-scale, inhuman abuses excused every day. There are far more examples of egregious abuse excused by the courts by QI than you can stomach looking at; just start searching. Feel free to quibble about all the 'good calls we don't hear about', and then dive in to 'second guessing split-second life or death situations'. We've all been through this discussion before.
  - tiahura 6y ago
    That's a lovely theory which somehow manages to ignore the industrial-scale, inhuman abuses excused every day. On what planet? I'll admit, I don't do a ton of criminal work, but, I've spent more than my fair share of time sitting through criminal dockets observing cops and criminals and I just don't see it. My good friend won the last significant police brutality case in my metro of 2M people and that was 5 years ago. Here's another tell. Watch daytime TV for an hour and you'll see attorneys advertising re: Insurance companies, J&J Talc, Monsanto, Me Too, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, Monsanto, Mesh manufacturers, Asbestos claims, Elmiron claims, ad infinitum. But, you won't see any police brutality commercials, and it's not because us ambulance chasers are afraid of the police. It's because the cases are so few and far between that it doesn't make sense to waste resources seeking them out.
    - burkaman 6y ago
      It's not because you're afraid of the police, it's because the courts have made it clear that accountability is impossible and cases are pointless. The standard is that you can't convict an officer for constitutional violations unless there was clearly established precedent before the violation occurred. It's an obvious catch 22: to establish precedent you must convict an officer, but you can't convict them unless there was already precedent. Maybe some court cases will help explain. Here's Mattos v. Agarano, where officers tased a defenseless, completely non-threatening pregnant woman for fun: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/10/17/08-15567.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/10/17/0... A clear framing of the catch 22: > In determining whether an officer is entitled to qualified immunity, we employ a two-step test: first, we decide whether the officer violated a plaintiff’s constitutional right; if the answer to that inquiry is “yes,” we proceed to determine whether the constitutional right was “clearly established in light of the specific context of the case” at the time of the events in question. Even a general precedent isn't enough, you must find a previous incident relevant to the specific context of the case, which again is impossible because any officers in the past ~50 years would also have been protected by qualified immunity. > In sum, Brooks’s alleged offenses were minor. She did not pose an immediate threat to safety of the officers or others. She actively resisted arrest insofar as she refused to get out of her car when instructed to do so and stiffened her body and clutched her steering wheel to frustrate the officers’ efforts to remove her from her car. Brooks did not evade arrest by flight, and no other exigent circumstances existed at the time. She was seven months pregnant, which the officers knew, and they tased her three times within less than one minute, inflicting extreme pain on Brooks.[10] A reasonable fact-finder could conclude, taking the evidence in the light most favorable to Brooks, that the officers’ use of force was unreasonable and therefore constitutionally excessive. Of course, qualified immunity applied, there was no reason to further investigate the constitutional violation, case dismissed. You can look at Kaufman County v. Winzer, where officers shot (17 times) and killed a mentally impaired man 6 seconds after seeing him, because a completely different man had shot at them and they were scared. https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/kaufman-county-texas-v-winzer/ https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/kaufman-county-t... If you like, you can also read about how qualified immunity doesn't even achieve its alleged purpose, to shield officers from wasting time with discovery and other trial-related obligations. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/Schwartz_1ki1sac4.pdf https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/Schwartz_1ki1sac4.pdf You can read a much better researched article on this topic from an actual legal scholar, rather than a random internet commenter: http://ndlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2-Schwartz.pdf http://ndlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2-Schwartz... You can read Jessop v. City of Fresno, where officers who literally stole $200,000+ could not be sued, because no officer before the advent of qualified immunity had been convicted of that particular crime, and the legislature hadn't thought to pass a law saying "police officers can't steal": https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/09/04/17-16756.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/09/04/1... > At the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers are entitled to qualified immunity. Let me know how many more cases it will take to convince you, and I'll be happy to list them.
glitcher 6y ago
> And even when cops do finally cross the line, they just move towns or states and get a new job And even though our collective awareness about this issue is increasing, this just happened yesterday: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961692068/officer-who-quit-wisconsin-police-job-under-pressure-joins-nearby-sheriffs-dept https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961692068/officer-who-quit-wi...
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  There is actually a national register of police who were fired, suspended, or resigned to avoid termination. During BLM, to the credit of one particular police chief, when terminating two racist officers, he had them de-registered as police in his state, and placed on this register. The problem? In a large number, even a majority of police departments, the Union CBA forbids the City or Department from looking at this register for hiring decisions.
FireBeyond 6y ago
QI is horrifically racist. A group of black community members and pastors, I believe, were getting some coffee before boarding a Greyhound, and an officer "moved them on", so as to prevent (in his perception or claim) a dangerous situation from a group of people who were "upset" by this. They refused, and despite no crime being committed (as was later shown in court, with a directed verdict of no violation), all fifteen of them were arrested. They sued, claiming civil rights violations. Courts found 1) that there was indeed a lack of constitutionality in what happened, and 2) police were not required to "predict"(?) what laws were constitutional or not. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson_v._Ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson_v._Ray This rubs me the wrong way in a much less egregious way. I'm an avid photographer, and while my area isn't really focused in a problematic way, I've read many a story of photographers being prevented from photographing police, or in public, or similar. We are expected to know what our constitutional rights are - remember, "ignorance is no excuse" when it comes to the law for us. But, as above, multiple police chiefs have said, when addressing issues of such photographers being later released without charge, "We cannot expect our police to be constitutional lawyers". This is an issue to the extent that things like this are created: http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
- eudydyyd 6y ago
  That's a pretty weak line of reasoning for declaring QI racist. The reason police were given QI protection was because the court felt that the police were shielded by the same laws that already shielded judges so long as their actions were undertaken during the performance of the duties.
- rrauenza 6y ago
  Don't watch the YouTube channel "audit the audit"... It will just make you angry. A lot of the interactions are about people videoing or photographing in public places.

gabereiser 6y ago

^ This. Cops aren’t your friends. They can and will use anything you say against you, never for you, in a court of law. I’m not saying we don’t need them. I’m saying they aren’t your friend. Never underestimate the ability of a cop to twist the truth. In court, a cop has the fullest faith of the courts even if they don’t show up. Defending yourself against what a cop says happened is almost impossible. It can be done though.

wtetzner 6y ago
> I’m not saying we don’t need them We need them, but we also need them to be held accountable for their actions.
- gabereiser 6y ago
  Absolutely
ashtonkem 6y ago
I have never seen a convincing argument that we don’t need cops, courts, and prisons (not that you’re making that argument). Every society seems to have them, and I have a very hard time imagining a society that wouldn’t lock up someone like, say, Anders Breivik. That being said, it’s pretty obvious that the American justice system is unnecessarily brutal and inefficient. We lock up a huge percentage of our population and have a pretty high recidivism rate compared to our peer nations. Well short of “defunding the police”, we desperately need to rethink the scope and responsibilities of our criminal justice system, and rethink the relationship between police and the citizens of this country.
- gabereiser 6y ago
  We absolutely need cops, courts, prisons, jails and all that. The issue I have is with how they are deployed as tools to correct societies behavior. The way the USA uses them, it doesn't work and only serves to suppress a group of minorities from becoming participants nor leaders in society. Jail is supposed to be for those who did wrong and need a "timeout" so to speak. A wake up call or reality check on their behavior. Prison is more longer term rehabilitation. Problem is, our society's tolerance of crime and sentences for said crimes lands people in jail more often than not. Difference being jail sentences are up to a year, prison year+. Not to mention the absurd bias towards minorities in how we police, how we judge, etc. to fill said jails and prisons which are increasingly becoming For-Profit by leasing prison workforce labor out at 1890s labor costs of $0.27/day. It's legalized slavery.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Legalized slavery? Enslaving prisoners was never illegal in the US.

tiahura 6y ago

Qualified immunity, a doctrine made up out of whole cloth by the courts, means that cops often can’t be prosecuted or even sued for the most egregious of conduct. Qualified immunity has nothing to do with criminal liability, it is a civil affirmative defense and a sound one. Essentially, it provides personal protection for ordinary negligence. When an employee at Pottery Barn drops a plate, we don't deduct it from their paycheck. If we did, no one would work there.

_jal 6y ago
That's a lovely theory which somehow manages to ignore the industrial-scale, inhuman abuses excused every day. There are far more examples of egregious abuse excused by the courts by QI than you can stomach looking at; just start searching. Feel free to quibble about all the 'good calls we don't hear about', and then dive in to 'second guessing split-second life or death situations'. We've all been through this discussion before.
- tiahura 6y ago
  That's a lovely theory which somehow manages to ignore the industrial-scale, inhuman abuses excused every day. On what planet? I'll admit, I don't do a ton of criminal work, but, I've spent more than my fair share of time sitting through criminal dockets observing cops and criminals and I just don't see it. My good friend won the last significant police brutality case in my metro of 2M people and that was 5 years ago. Here's another tell. Watch daytime TV for an hour and you'll see attorneys advertising re: Insurance companies, J&J Talc, Monsanto, Me Too, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, Monsanto, Mesh manufacturers, Asbestos claims, Elmiron claims, ad infinitum. But, you won't see any police brutality commercials, and it's not because us ambulance chasers are afraid of the police. It's because the cases are so few and far between that it doesn't make sense to waste resources seeking them out.
  - burkaman 6y ago
    It's not because you're afraid of the police, it's because the courts have made it clear that accountability is impossible and cases are pointless. The standard is that you can't convict an officer for constitutional violations unless there was clearly established precedent before the violation occurred. It's an obvious catch 22: to establish precedent you must convict an officer, but you can't convict them unless there was already precedent. Maybe some court cases will help explain. Here's Mattos v. Agarano, where officers tased a defenseless, completely non-threatening pregnant woman for fun: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/10/17/08-15567.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/10/17/0... A clear framing of the catch 22: > In determining whether an officer is entitled to qualified immunity, we employ a two-step test: first, we decide whether the officer violated a plaintiff’s constitutional right; if the answer to that inquiry is “yes,” we proceed to determine whether the constitutional right was “clearly established in light of the specific context of the case” at the time of the events in question. Even a general precedent isn't enough, you must find a previous incident relevant to the specific context of the case, which again is impossible because any officers in the past ~50 years would also have been protected by qualified immunity. > In sum, Brooks’s alleged offenses were minor. She did not pose an immediate threat to safety of the officers or others. She actively resisted arrest insofar as she refused to get out of her car when instructed to do so and stiffened her body and clutched her steering wheel to frustrate the officers’ efforts to remove her from her car. Brooks did not evade arrest by flight, and no other exigent circumstances existed at the time. She was seven months pregnant, which the officers knew, and they tased her three times within less than one minute, inflicting extreme pain on Brooks.[10] A reasonable fact-finder could conclude, taking the evidence in the light most favorable to Brooks, that the officers’ use of force was unreasonable and therefore constitutionally excessive. Of course, qualified immunity applied, there was no reason to further investigate the constitutional violation, case dismissed. You can look at Kaufman County v. Winzer, where officers shot (17 times) and killed a mentally impaired man 6 seconds after seeing him, because a completely different man had shot at them and they were scared. https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/kaufman-county-texas-v-winzer/ https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/kaufman-county-t... If you like, you can also read about how qualified immunity doesn't even achieve its alleged purpose, to shield officers from wasting time with discovery and other trial-related obligations. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/Schwartz_1ki1sac4.pdf https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/Schwartz_1ki1sac4.pdf You can read a much better researched article on this topic from an actual legal scholar, rather than a random internet commenter: http://ndlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2-Schwartz.pdf http://ndlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2-Schwartz... You can read Jessop v. City of Fresno, where officers who literally stole $200,000+ could not be sued, because no officer before the advent of qualified immunity had been convicted of that particular crime, and the legislature hadn't thought to pass a law saying "police officers can't steal": https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/09/04/17-16756.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/09/04/1... > At the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers are entitled to qualified immunity. Let me know how many more cases it will take to convince you, and I'll be happy to list them.

glitcher 6y ago

> And even when cops do finally cross the line, they just move towns or states and get a new job And even though our collective awareness about this issue is increasing, this just happened yesterday: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961692068/officer-who-quit-wisconsin-police-job-under-pressure-joins-nearby-sheriffs-dept https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961692068/officer-who-quit-wi...

FireBeyond 6y ago
There is actually a national register of police who were fired, suspended, or resigned to avoid termination. During BLM, to the credit of one particular police chief, when terminating two racist officers, he had them de-registered as police in his state, and placed on this register. The problem? In a large number, even a majority of police departments, the Union CBA forbids the City or Department from looking at this register for hiring decisions.

FireBeyond 6y ago

QI is horrifically racist. A group of black community members and pastors, I believe, were getting some coffee before boarding a Greyhound, and an officer "moved them on", so as to prevent (in his perception or claim) a dangerous situation from a group of people who were "upset" by this. They refused, and despite no crime being committed (as was later shown in court, with a directed verdict of no violation), all fifteen of them were arrested. They sued, claiming civil rights violations. Courts found 1) that there was indeed a lack of constitutionality in what happened, and 2) police were not required to "predict"(?) what laws were constitutional or not. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson_v._Ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson_v._Ray This rubs me the wrong way in a much less egregious way. I'm an avid photographer, and while my area isn't really focused in a problematic way, I've read many a story of photographers being prevented from photographing police, or in public, or similar. We are expected to know what our constitutional rights are - remember, "ignorance is no excuse" when it comes to the law for us. But, as above, multiple police chiefs have said, when addressing issues of such photographers being later released without charge, "We cannot expect our police to be constitutional lawyers". This is an issue to the extent that things like this are created: http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

eudydyyd 6y ago
That's a pretty weak line of reasoning for declaring QI racist. The reason police were given QI protection was because the court felt that the police were shielded by the same laws that already shielded judges so long as their actions were undertaken during the performance of the duties.
rrauenza 6y ago
Don't watch the YouTube channel "audit the audit"... It will just make you angry. A lot of the interactions are about people videoing or photographing in public places.