I don't know what made this particular case utterly unprecedented. However, one criticism of qualified immunity is that it protects law enforcement on the basis

I don't know what made this particular case utterly unprecedented. However, one criticism of qualified immunity is that it protects law enforcement on the basis of otherwise irrelevant facts. https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-legal-practical-moral-failure https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-lega... > In practice, this legal standard is a huge hurdle for civil rights plaintiffs because it generally requires them to identify not just a clear legal rule but a prior case with functionally identical facts.