In theory yes, but it has been expanded to a de facto protection from police officers from criminal liability.
Let’s say you are filming an officer arresting someone (perfectly legal) and they arrest you for obstucting justice and “illegally filming a police officer” and they sieze your phone never to be seen again. Will the cop face criminal prosecution for false arrest/kidnapping and stealing your phone?
How? I agree that police often escape criminal prosecution in cases where (I think) criminal prosecution might have been warranted, but I can’t think of a case where criminal prosecution was avoided by an appeal to qualified immunity.
Maybe; maybe not. But whatever happens regarding criminal prosecution has nothing to do with qualified immunity.
What I am saying is that the concept of qualified immunity (not the legal definition that applies only to civil cases) has unofficially been expanded so that police tend not to be held for crimes they commit. Okay maybe it is not called “qualified immunity” when it involves a criminal case but if a cop makes up a law and arrests you for it “not showing ID to a LEO” let’s say, why isn’t that cop arrested and charged with kidnapping? He had no legal authority to arrest you since you weren’t breaking the law ipso facto the charge you were arrested on doesn’t exist. I contend that most people in authority would argue the cop should not be arrested for kidnapping because there is a “need to protect officials who are required to exercise discretion and the related public interest in encouraging the vigorous exercise of official authority.”
Probably not, but that was true before “Qualified immunity” and would continue being true if it were abolished.
I think the word y’alls looking for here is “impunity”.
Qualified impunity.
Well, we don’t know a lot about this incident yet, but it doesn’t look good to me.
According to further comments on the thread… so whatever grain of salt on that…
The Lyft had a light out, which is why they were stopped. The Lyft Driver did not have his ID.
The passenger also did not have ID. Which is perfectly legal, if you are not the one driving.
How that resulted in the passenger being brutalized is unclear. The police were claiming that he was resisting arrest, but are not saying what he was being arrested for. I guess for asking why he needed to have an ID as a passenger. And, since resisting arrest is anything that the cop says it is, including just struggling to breathe, I’m not sure that I would buy their story.
At one point, an officer claims that the passenger is biting his hand, while both his hands are visible, and unmarked.
Every officer in this video should be charged with felonious assault, including the ones who just stood by and let it happen.
I’m not sure whether this is the proper place for it, but I’ll put this very troubling incident here:
The guy just walked up to their car and started firing. They’re both apparently in critical condition. Very scary stuff, and I sincerely hope they pull through.
In related news, the LA County Sheriffs tweeted:
On the one hand, I think it’s entirely possible that some asshole protesters might be at the hospital shouting “we hope they die.” On the other hand, I’ll need some independent corroboration before I mark it down as fact, given the tendency of some police spokepeople to—what’s the official term?—make shit up.
Yep, that was exactly the sort of reaction that I expect. Certainly do not condone, but I also do not condone floodwaters wiping out a town when they breach a poorly maintained dam.
The danger of a cop being shot during an arrest is pretty marginal. If a cop is already aware of the suspect, even if they do try something, then it’s pretty unlikely for them to get a shot off.
However, when cops brutalize the people that they are supposed to be protecting, you have reactions like this, where they are ambushed, and have no chance to even be aware of the danger.
In the video, the spokesman for the police says that they were just there “Minding their own business.” Which is what many people are doing when they find themselves at the wrong end of a cop on a bad day.
These cops may have been the most diligent and “woke” cops on the force, but they still “matched a description.”
The cops with hair triggers and the cops who brutalize those they are supposed to protect are putting their fellow cops in danger with their actions.
Of course, the likely reaction from police is to, rather than decrease their abuse, to use this incident as justification for increasing their terrorism.
Sadly, I expect to see more of this going forward. I’m fairly surprised we haven’t seen more of it already.
There were peaceful protests, sometimes as innocuous as kneeling before a sportsball game. There were demonstrations organized with the municipalities. There were demonstrations that blocked traffic. There were riots. The message that they send is clear, and that message is being deliberately ignored by those who want to see the violence increase, who want civil unrest.
People made much hay about “Defund the Police.” They chose instead to have to deal with “Deflate the Police.”
No.
Just No.
Solving your problems with the business end of a gun is never the right way. It’s not right when cops do it. And it’s not right when some rando does it.
It doesn’t matter if they were the two worst cops on the force. You can’t forfeit your right to stay alive no matter what you do. This is what we are trying to say when we protest the killings of people like Rice or Brown. No matter what you think someone may have done, you do not get to kill them. Period. No matter who you are. Society is meaningless, otherwise.
We are in agreement.
True.
Yep.
Absolutely, which is why I am pointing out that society is failing here.
The only question is, is society failing the fault of those who are being terrorized by the police, or the police who are allowing society to fail while they brutalize those that they are supposed to protect?
Okay. Hold on a minute. There were 48 felonious deaths of police killed in the line of duty in 2019, additional 41 were accidental in the line of duty:
We are always talking about the proportion of victims based on their population size. Police make up approx. 0.25% of the US population.
Seems to me that it would be wrong to dismiss so casually the risks police face every day.
It’s often said that no job is worth dying for. Except maybe if you’re a cop or firefighter where that’s almost in the job description. Perhaps we ought not be too cavalier about the risks these people face every day.
I have seen some charts that show statically policework is not in the top ten in terms of risk of on-the-job death. Statistics are easy to manipulate – they might be counting every police department employee including dispatchers and administrators who never go out on the street on duty versus only the guys who actually go out on crab boats or whatever.
Still, the dangers of policework are probably grossly overstated. And one should always include that violent assholes tend to make themselves targets of violence. Not all police officers are violent assholes, but there are enough violent assholes on the force to generate a public impression that it is the norm. You hear about a dozen plane crashes, not about a couple hundred thousand flights that went forward like clockwork.
Out of how many encounters and arrests?
48 out of hundreds of thousands of encounters?
15 of which were for investigative or law enforcement activities.
6 during a traffic stop.
3 during arrests
So yeah, the chances of a cop being killed during routine encounters with the public are pretty marginal.
But they approach each one as though it could be the one, endangering the lives of the public, and increasing tensions that leads to escalations
I did not. I pointed out that the risk assessment that they make is out of proportion to the actual risk that they face.
Other than the 13 jobs that are more dangerous. And garbage collectors aren’t allowed to shoot at cars.
The other part is: how many encounters? If you have a big stand-off situation, I could see that more than one officer might not make it, or might be classified as a felonious killing by friendly fire (where the criminal is held responsible for any deaths that occur during the crime – a crash during a high-speed chase, for instance).
A trash collector isn’t afraid of being killed by a banana peel because no one thinks that a banana peel is out to try to kill him. Accidents at work are a different type of risk assessment than having to face someone who is intent on putting an end to your life.
It is true that people are generally poor at risk assessment. Police often use poor judgement and the results can be tragic. However, I imagine a cop wants to go home at the end of the work day just like most people do. But while most of us tend to come across some unpleasant people in our jobs, few are a potential or real threat to us…
There are fundamental problems within the police force related to policy, training and selection criteria. But to heap the entire blame on police is as wrong as any other generalization that gets vilified in these conversations.
… you know what… this is a stupid fucking conversation and I have only myself to blame for stepping in it.
That is also the case with the police. Most encounters do not involve outright hostility, very few involve force of any kind and a vanishingly small fraction are truly violent. As far as I can tell, most of the violence is initiated by the police themselves (there is zero legitimate data to support or refute this view, it is just my own perception).
Eh, I’ve had people threaten to kill me for cutting off their cable. Even had one point a gun at me while I was up on the strand.
I wasn’t allowed to shoot them.
And my point is not to vilify the police, but to point out that the actions of the bad ones, that the “good” ones cover for, vilify the police already.
When a doctor tells you that if you don’t quit smoking, you may get cancer, they are not telling you that you deserve cancer, they are pointing out a very real risk that you are facing if you keep doing what you are doing.
That’s all I’m pointing out. That if the cops keep terrorizing the neighborhoods they are supposed to protect, then there will be those who use that as an excuse to enact violence in response.
Might want to read this article, about a man who used to work for the CIA and later as a government consultant and then decided to become a beat cop at a salary reduction of about $100,000. His view is that the police should not view the people they protect as “civilians”, as if that were different from what the police are. They should be seen as neighbours.
If more officers approached the job the way this one does, we wouldn’t be seeing the ACAB attitude and we wouldn’t have people wanting police departments nationwide to be dissolved. Yes, most of the people saying defund the police don’t meant that, but some do. (I want to see a lot of the funding going to social workers and housing help for the homeless and medical assistance.)