A SCOTUS Opening

[Belsnickel]

(10-23-2020, 11:44 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: This is absolutely false.  Qualified immunity only prevents the officer in question from being sued personally.  It absolutely, 100%, does not prevent anyone from seeking redress if their rights are violated or they are otherwise treated improperly.  That person can, and pretty much always does, sue the city, county or state employing said officer.

Your statement about second guessing is a monumental understatement.  If an officer knows that any decision they make could cost them their house, life savings, children's college fund then you're effectively ending law enforcement.  A person can be in handcuffs while you're escorting them to the patrol car. They struggle against you, slip from your grasp, fall to the ground and break their arm, break a tooth or otherwise injure themselves.  Without qualified immunity that person will not only sue the employer as stated above they will sue you, claiming that you threw them to the ground, or were negligent in letting them fall as they were under your control.  The city, county or state has lawyers on payroll to deal with this exact thing, they get paid regardless of whether they are fighting a lawsuit (of course they are never idle, but you get my point).  The officer has no such luxury.  They must hire a personal lawyer to defend themselves and their personal assets from this lawsuit.  Even if they win the odds of collecting attorney's fees are slight.  Just one such case, successfully fought, can severely drain a person's savings or even put them in debt.

This discussion around qualified immunity is rife with severe misconceptions, and that someone as into policy and intelligent as you isn't fully up to speed on what it actually means and what ending it would cause honestly frightens me.  I suppose I should be happy that I'm on the downhill side of the retirement hill, because I shudder to think what policing would be like if the far left lunatics get their way on this issue.

Well, I did specify the personal liability in the beginning of my post. Perhaps I should have added "from the individual responsible rather than the institution" to the end instead of assuming it was understood based on the opening. I understand how the policy works, and I understand what it would mean to end the practice. I hold a position for my city in which the city can side with me if my decisions are challenged, which results in the City Attorney's office representing me, or they can actually take me (and the four others on the board) to court and we would be faced with hiring attorneys individually to defend ourselves. While my role is not one of life and death, or even violence, I do understand how the decisions you make can result in something like that.

I guess my issue is that I would like to see some other potential policy solutions to potentially replace qualified immunity. Things that could prevent situations such as those that you detail from reaching full litigation, but still allows for holding officers personally responsible in situations where they were in the wrong. I'm not in favor of the responsibility resting entirely on the department.

I do want to also point out that much of what I have read on the topic doesn't come from left-wing sources; it actually comes from libertarian writing. This is less about left v. right than you perceive.