What is qualified immunity?

[brush]

Is it a good think that police have it in the back of their minds when on duty?

See options below.

8 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	A good thing for law enforcement officers.
	2 (25%)
	Not such a good thing for POCs.
	0 (0%)
	Hard to say.
	0 (0%)
	Unnecessay for police who enforce the law justly.
	5 (63%)
	Perfect for cops who pretend they fear for their lives.
	0 (0%)
	Let me think about it.
	0 (0%)
	A justification for the "defund the police" slogan.
	0 (0%)
	A good way for cops to cosplay as agent 007 with a license to kill.
	1 (13%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[Maine Abu El Banat]

1. There is no justification

For that moronic "Defund the Police" slogan. It almost cost us the most important election in history. And is still being used against Dem candidates.

[Amishman]

2. A symptom of the overall mess of our legal system

Our legal system is far too permissive of frivolous / nuisance lawsuits. We're excessively litigious as a society.

Qualified immunity kinda makes sense buffer to keep every Karen who gets a DUI from suing the arresting officer.

In practice it is also an unacceptable shield that rogue LEOs can use to avoid accountability for their misconduct. Yes, there are supposedly exceptions to it for misconduct, but given the pro-police bias of our prosecutors and judges, these are almost never allowed to be used.

The current status quo is unacceptable; and I see two possible routes to something better.

Option 1: end qualified immunity but also reform the legal system to reduce bogus lawsuits (not just for police, but for everyone).

Option 2: keep qualified immunity, but reform the exceptions and make it harder for the system to shield rogue cops when they should not.

I'd prefer option 1, but option 2 is still better than what we have.

[brush]

5. Agreed. Option 1.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

3. This is a very interesting article on CO. banning qualified immunity for police.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/12/18/colorado-tries-new-way-to-punish-rogue-cops

Colorado Tries New Way To Punish Rogue Cops
Individual officers can’t claim ‘qualified immunity’ in excessive force cases, but may not end up paying damages out of their own pockets.

“This has to stop.” Mari Newman had been saying that for years as she fought in court against police brutality. The Denver civil rights lawyer had won verdicts and settlements for people abused by officers, and won awards for her work, too. But police departments and their officers’ behavior didn’t change.

The final straw for her was her latest job, representing the family of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist who was stopped by police last year while walking home after buying iced tea in Aurora, Colorado. Officers responded to a 911 call from someone claiming a Black man “looked sketchy.” When McClain asked the officers to leave him in peace, they used chokeholds to pin him to the ground and had him injected with a powerful sedative. As the unarmed, handcuffed man vomited and begged for his life, police threatened to sic a dog on him. McClain was taken to a hospital and died there a few days later.

“I was pissed off and frustrated,” Newman said recently. So she called a longtime friend who had the power to do something: state Rep. Leslie Herod. The two women met for drinks, shot some pool—and hatched a plan for what real police reform would look like.

Colorado passed the final version of these sweeping changes in June, including one drawing national attention: Now police officers who violate people’s civil rights can be held personally responsible in state court.

This, IMO, should be at the Fed. level with much stiffer fines and penalties, but at least CO is trying something new.

There's also an article examining the impact one year later.


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/police-reform-qualified-immunity-supreme-court-colorado-new-mexico.html

Colorado Enacted a Major Police Reform Last Year
Will other states follow?

In the year since it was passed, Colorado’s ban on qualified immunity hasn’t had the earth-shaking impact that police claimed it might. Officers aren’t leaving the force in droves, recruitment numbers seem to be just fine, and there’s been no deluge of misconduct lawsuits. Even so, Colorado’s law hasn’t inspired much change in other states or on the federal level.

[samnsara]

4. my Grandfather was chief of police in Pauls Valley Oklahoma in the 40's and also in

..a small town in Washington state in the 50s and not once did he ever have to use qualified immunity. In fact, since all their notes back then were hand written in small notepads ( think of Joe Friday), I have ALL those notepads ( as they were told to save them) and he was one of the good guys...



He was one of the GOOD cops.