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Qualified immunity does not shield police from wrongful detention or arrest. An arrest must be valid according to a given charge and evidence even if those do n

Qualified immunity does not shield police from wrongful detention or arrest. An arrest must be valid according to a given charge and evidence even if those do not survive to trial.

ceejayoz 6y ago
In practice, it does. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/they-get-a-get-out-of-jail-free-card-why-law-enforcement-and-other-government-officials-are-protected-from-civil-lawsuits-2020-06-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/they-get-a-get-out-of-jail... > “In such cases, when the court declines to establish whether police used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, it avoids setting a clearly established precedent for future cases, even for the most egregious acts of police violence,” the report said. “In effect, the same conduct can repeatedly go unpunished.” > For example, there’s Jessop v. City of Fresno, Calif., in which a pair of businessmen alleged that police officers had stolen some $225,000 in cash and rare coins they had seized while executing search warrants. The officers were deemed entitled to qualified immunity because “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.”
- austincheney 6y ago
  Those are both irrelevant to the issue at hand: wrongful arrest. Wrongful arrest occurs when either the incorrect person is detained or when a person is detained without merit. In order for police to detain people they need to place them under arrest, which includes Maranda warnings, or have a signed warrant.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    It shields them from civil liability for wrongful arrest, as the courts will apparently go "there's no established law that you can't arrest someone for no good reason on Thursday at 9:53pm on Third Street". We have friendly prosecutors who "could indict a ham sandwich" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich#Cultural_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich#Cultural_impact) mysteriously failing to get an indictment to handle the criminal side of it.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      An indictment is not an arrest. An indictment comes from a district attorney while an arrest comes from police. The two don't even have to be associated with each other as a person can be indicted before they are arrested, or vise versa. An indictment is a motion to proceed to trial, and often doesn't even require the availability or presence of the person. An arrest is a detention of a person to police custody.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        The point: there aren't gonna be criminal consequences for a bad cop who made a wrongful arrest if it never goes to trial. QI shields them from civil suits, so they're quite well protected on both fronts.
        austincheney 6y ago
        Even more to the point is that there is a readily identifiable problem. It is better to put energy towards fixing the problem than apply a really shit work around with horrible second and third order sequences only for the point of doing what you couldn't do the correct way.
  - schneidmaster 6y ago
    Police absolutely do not have to read your Miranda rights in order to arrest you -- they only need to read your rights if they plan to question you with regards to a criminal investigation and they would like to use your statements as evidence in a court of law.
  - filoeleven 6y ago
    > In order for police to detain people they need to place them under arrest That is not true. Police can detain you for some period of time without placing you under arrest. You can be detained for “reasonable suspicion” that you were involved in a crime. There are naturally a lot of arguments about what qualifies as reasonable suspicion. This is why every “know your rights” organization instructs people to ask, “am I being detained? am I free to leave?” when trying to determine their status or end a police encounter. The link below is just one example. https://www.halt.org/am-i-being-detained-6-questions-you-should-ask-during-interactions-with-the-police/ https://www.halt.org/am-i-being-detained-6-questions-you-sho...
    - austincheney 6y ago
      > That is not true. Police can detain you for some period of time without placing you under arrest. That is a 4th amendment violation. You are free to leave police presence at any time up until they place you under arrest. If you are detained without arrest the remedy is to ask to be arrested. At that point police must arrest you or release you, because any evidence or detention after that point is invalid and invalidate such in the future for the related matter. Of course an even better answer is to just ask for an attorney, but either way the result is the same.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        No, it's not. A traffic stop is a temporary detention without an arrest. You are not free to leave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop
        austincheney 6y ago
        The most important word in that entire Wikipedia article is brief. The stop requires probably cause and must not exceed the minimum time necessary to inform dispatch, issue a citation, and perform a basic warrant search on their computer. Signing a citation provides a written promise to appear in court so that police do not have to arrest you and is not an admission of guilt. Refusal to sign is grounds for arrest. Either way police cannot reasonably communicate to you from another moving vehicle, which is the primary basis of such a stop, not a detainment pending other inquiries.

Qualified immunity does not shield police from wrongful detention or arrest. An arrest must be valid according to a given charge and evidence even if those do not survive to trial.

ceejayoz 6y ago

In practice, it does. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/they-get-a-get-out-of-jail-free-card-why-law-enforcement-and-other-government-officials-are-protected-from-civil-lawsuits-2020-06-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/they-get-a-get-out-of-jail... > “In such cases, when the court declines to establish whether police used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, it avoids setting a clearly established precedent for future cases, even for the most egregious acts of police violence,” the report said. “In effect, the same conduct can repeatedly go unpunished.” > For example, there’s Jessop v. City of Fresno, Calif., in which a pair of businessmen alleged that police officers had stolen some $225,000 in cash and rare coins they had seized while executing search warrants. The officers were deemed entitled to qualified immunity because “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.”

austincheney 6y ago
Those are both irrelevant to the issue at hand: wrongful arrest. Wrongful arrest occurs when either the incorrect person is detained or when a person is detained without merit. In order for police to detain people they need to place them under arrest, which includes Maranda warnings, or have a signed warrant.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  It shields them from civil liability for wrongful arrest, as the courts will apparently go "there's no established law that you can't arrest someone for no good reason on Thursday at 9:53pm on Third Street". We have friendly prosecutors who "could indict a ham sandwich" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich#Cultural_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich#Cultural_impact) mysteriously failing to get an indictment to handle the criminal side of it.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    An indictment is not an arrest. An indictment comes from a district attorney while an arrest comes from police. The two don't even have to be associated with each other as a person can be indicted before they are arrested, or vise versa. An indictment is a motion to proceed to trial, and often doesn't even require the availability or presence of the person. An arrest is a detention of a person to police custody.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      The point: there aren't gonna be criminal consequences for a bad cop who made a wrongful arrest if it never goes to trial. QI shields them from civil suits, so they're quite well protected on both fronts.
      - austincheney 6y ago
        Even more to the point is that there is a readily identifiable problem. It is better to put energy towards fixing the problem than apply a really shit work around with horrible second and third order sequences only for the point of doing what you couldn't do the correct way.
- schneidmaster 6y ago
  Police absolutely do not have to read your Miranda rights in order to arrest you -- they only need to read your rights if they plan to question you with regards to a criminal investigation and they would like to use your statements as evidence in a court of law.
- filoeleven 6y ago
  > In order for police to detain people they need to place them under arrest That is not true. Police can detain you for some period of time without placing you under arrest. You can be detained for “reasonable suspicion” that you were involved in a crime. There are naturally a lot of arguments about what qualifies as reasonable suspicion. This is why every “know your rights” organization instructs people to ask, “am I being detained? am I free to leave?” when trying to determine their status or end a police encounter. The link below is just one example. https://www.halt.org/am-i-being-detained-6-questions-you-should-ask-during-interactions-with-the-police/ https://www.halt.org/am-i-being-detained-6-questions-you-sho...
  - austincheney 6y ago
    > That is not true. Police can detain you for some period of time without placing you under arrest. That is a 4th amendment violation. You are free to leave police presence at any time up until they place you under arrest. If you are detained without arrest the remedy is to ask to be arrested. At that point police must arrest you or release you, because any evidence or detention after that point is invalid and invalidate such in the future for the related matter. Of course an even better answer is to just ask for an attorney, but either way the result is the same.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      No, it's not. A traffic stop is a temporary detention without an arrest. You are not free to leave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop
      - austincheney 6y ago
        The most important word in that entire Wikipedia article is brief. The stop requires probably cause and must not exceed the minimum time necessary to inform dispatch, issue a citation, and perform a basic warrant search on their computer. Signing a citation provides a written promise to appear in court so that police do not have to arrest you and is not an admission of guilt. Refusal to sign is grounds for arrest. Either way police cannot reasonably communicate to you from another moving vehicle, which is the primary basis of such a stop, not a detainment pending other inquiries.