4 ms·

"without fear of personal liability" You see no issue with that, seriously?

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> You see no issue with that, seriously? Qualified immunity isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is released, for example, when a government official breaks clearly established law. (Counterfactual: the courts have been very narrow in interpreting what "clearly established" means.)
- stormbrew 6y ago
  To expand on just how absurdly narrow courts interpret "clearly established", there's this example from the wikipedia page on qualified immunity[1] for eg. > Critics have cited examples such as a November 2019 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which found that an earlier court case ruling it unconstitutional for police to sic dogs on suspects who have surrendered by lying on the ground did not apply under the "clearly established" rule to a case in which Tennessee police allowed their police dog to bite a surrendered suspect because the suspect had surrendered not by lying down but by sitting on the ground and raising his hands. The net effect of this appears to basically be that it's impossible to prove literally anything pierces qualified immunity unless it was ruled on prior to the establishment of qualified immunity as a defense. How exactly can you create precedent when you require nearly identical precedent to set it? It's a blatant catch-22. Like, literally something that could have been in the book Catch 22. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gwd 6y ago
    Even better is the police who just stole stuff, because there was no "clearly established" law against stealing stuff: https://newrepublic.com/article/157342/supreme-court-police-qualified-immunity https://newrepublic.com/article/157342/supreme-court-police-...
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Qualified immunity isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. No, its a get-out-of-civil-liability-free card. > It is released, for example, when a government official breaks clearly established law. No, its not. As well as meeting the extremely narrow standard established for violating “clearly established law” and act must also fail to meet the extremely broad standard established for being an “objectively reasonable action”; otherwise, even if it violates a clearly established legal right, it remains protected by QI. While some protection loosely similar to QI may make sense, the actual rules around QI, both at the high level and in the details of how the high-level rules are applied, are particularly bad, especially, in practice, in the case of law enforcement officials, who practice within the law enforcement community puts at greatly reduced likelihood of being held criminally accountable for violations of rights than non-law-enforcement government agents.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    > No, its not. There is no qualified immunity protection upon the conviction of a criminal act regardless of how narrow or broad underlying factors are.
    - zrail 6y ago
      You have to be convicted first. Police don't even get indicted.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      That’s what you have friendly prosecutors for.
    - jellicle 6y ago
      You seem to have confused a true statement (qualified immunity is about torts, not crimes) with a false one (if there was a crime, then there can't be any qualified immunity claim in a corresponding civil case).
tjs8rj 6y ago
To be clear: qualified immunity is about civil liability. It doesn’t protect from criminal liability. Qualified immunity isn’t the reason cops don’t go to jail for murder, because it doesn’t apply at all for criminal procedures
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  That would be fine if it were possible to criminally prosecute the cops. But it isn't; only the government can do that, and they don't want to.
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    They are doing it right now.
    - hellbannedguy 6y ago
      This is an extremely rare event. In this case their was abundant video. Usually no one is around when cops are being bad, and their cop cams are always flipped off?
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      I don't know. There is a long history of cops being "prosecuted" in court theater and being found not guilty. This is generally only in high-profile cases. It is still fairly common to simply suspend an officer or "fire" them, allowing them to get a job in another department. So common that when we investigate folks in the high-profile cases, a history of misconduct isn't a surprise.
- thebradbain 6y ago
  However, a civilian cannot normally press criminal charges against a cop, so the distinction is moot in practice.
- marvin 6y ago
  That’s interesting. I thought it gave immunity against criminal prosecution if the officer «accidentally» did something criminal. The obvious solution is to ensure that police are actually tried and sentenced like regular citizens if they break criminal law, but I suppose we can’t have nice things.

> You see no issue with that, seriously? Qualified immunity isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is released, for example, when a government official breaks clearly established law. (Counterfactual: the courts have been very narrow in interpreting what "clearly established" means.)

stormbrew 6y ago
To expand on just how absurdly narrow courts interpret "clearly established", there's this example from the wikipedia page on qualified immunity[1] for eg. > Critics have cited examples such as a November 2019 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which found that an earlier court case ruling it unconstitutional for police to sic dogs on suspects who have surrendered by lying on the ground did not apply under the "clearly established" rule to a case in which Tennessee police allowed their police dog to bite a surrendered suspect because the suspect had surrendered not by lying down but by sitting on the ground and raising his hands. The net effect of this appears to basically be that it's impossible to prove literally anything pierces qualified immunity unless it was ruled on prior to the establishment of qualified immunity as a defense. How exactly can you create precedent when you require nearly identical precedent to set it? It's a blatant catch-22. Like, literally something that could have been in the book Catch 22. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gwd 6y ago
  Even better is the police who just stole stuff, because there was no "clearly established" law against stealing stuff: https://newrepublic.com/article/157342/supreme-court-police-qualified-immunity https://newrepublic.com/article/157342/supreme-court-police-...
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Qualified immunity isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. No, its a get-out-of-civil-liability-free card. > It is released, for example, when a government official breaks clearly established law. No, its not. As well as meeting the extremely narrow standard established for violating “clearly established law” and act must also fail to meet the extremely broad standard established for being an “objectively reasonable action”; otherwise, even if it violates a clearly established legal right, it remains protected by QI. While some protection loosely similar to QI may make sense, the actual rules around QI, both at the high level and in the details of how the high-level rules are applied, are particularly bad, especially, in practice, in the case of law enforcement officials, who practice within the law enforcement community puts at greatly reduced likelihood of being held criminally accountable for violations of rights than non-law-enforcement government agents.
- austincheney 6y ago
  > No, its not. There is no qualified immunity protection upon the conviction of a criminal act regardless of how narrow or broad underlying factors are.
  - zrail 6y ago
    You have to be convicted first. Police don't even get indicted.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    That’s what you have friendly prosecutors for.
  - jellicle 6y ago
    You seem to have confused a true statement (qualified immunity is about torts, not crimes) with a false one (if there was a crime, then there can't be any qualified immunity claim in a corresponding civil case).

tjs8rj 6y ago

To be clear: qualified immunity is about civil liability. It doesn’t protect from criminal liability. Qualified immunity isn’t the reason cops don’t go to jail for murder, because it doesn’t apply at all for criminal procedures

thaumasiotes 6y ago
That would be fine if it were possible to criminally prosecute the cops. But it isn't; only the government can do that, and they don't want to.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  They are doing it right now.
  - hellbannedguy 6y ago
    This is an extremely rare event. In this case their was abundant video. Usually no one is around when cops are being bad, and their cop cams are always flipped off?
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    I don't know. There is a long history of cops being "prosecuted" in court theater and being found not guilty. This is generally only in high-profile cases. It is still fairly common to simply suspend an officer or "fire" them, allowing them to get a job in another department. So common that when we investigate folks in the high-profile cases, a history of misconduct isn't a surprise.
thebradbain 6y ago
However, a civilian cannot normally press criminal charges against a cop, so the distinction is moot in practice.
marvin 6y ago
That’s interesting. I thought it gave immunity against criminal prosecution if the officer «accidentally» did something criminal. The obvious solution is to ensure that police are actually tried and sentenced like regular citizens if they break criminal law, but I suppose we can’t have nice things.