The two cases you cited have more nuance than what you describe. First, the largest issue that doom most of these Section 1983 suits is that you bear a higher burden of proving that the actions were not only wrong, but clearly violate the United States Constitution. Both of these Plaintiffs would have easily won in state court under tort theories, but they and their attorneys got greedy and went for the higher payout (winning 1983 suits are awarded attorneys fees as well).
The speeding pregnant woman: In keeping with the spirit of the thread, all she had to do was what thousands of motorists do every day. Sign the ticket and off she goes. But she didn’t. She decided arrogantly (the article says “mistakenly” but where did she get her law degree from to decide she was going to take that action?) that she was not going to sign the ticket. In many states, including my own, an arrest is required in that situation. And then she refuses to submit to the arrest.
So the cops are going to have to use some level of force to get her out of the car. They were probably talking about where to tase her in hopes that she would not want to be tased and voluntarily get out of the car. But she didn’t. So what to do? Should the officers have reached in and pulled her out? Maybe they get a bullet in the face when the try that? Unless she complied after the first tase and the officers gave her two more for the hell of it (which it is not alleged) we can assume that she was still resisting the arrest.
Was that force excessive? Maybe. Probably. But that is what qualified immunity is for, not to second guess officers on the beat. And even if the officers made a mistake, I put more of the blame on the woman for first refusing to sign her citation and second for unlawfully resisting a proper arrest. At most I would say it is unfortunate, but not something I would hold as a reason why we need to eliminate QI.
The second case, the theft of the money. Again, the plaintiff wanted to constitutionalize it. And he picked the Fourth Amendment instead of the Fifth. As the property was seized pursuant to a valid warrant, it is not at all clear that a subsequent theft violates that amendment. But the plaintiff saw dollar signs. I guarantee you that officer was fired and probably prosecuted. However, the sole question for that case was “Does the cop owe the criminal money and attorneys fees?” That is not at all clear. Section 1983 is not the only remedy for police abuses.
In this video, the White woman claims there is a witness “Ms. Anderson” to the altercation with and the threatening behavior of the Black woman. The actions of the Black woman were so aggressive that the White woman is clearly fearful about another encounter and is unable to pick up her child from school. The police officer had every right to deescalate the situation and to document what had occurred. There was probable cause that a crime had occurred. By acquiring the identity of the Black woman, any further conflict was far less likely.
What happened in the Bronx yesterday where two New York City Police Department officers were shot within hours doesn’t help police-civilian relations either.
Mayor de Blasio in NYC is not well liked by the police, as my previous thread about the Democratic Party and the police relations show.
These events that happened since the early 2010s helped fuel the counterargument towards Black Lives Matter called **Blue Lives Matter. **
Given that the cops must have already reached in (remember, they had twisted her arm behind her back already), I doubt catching a bullet in the face was a worry at that point. The fact that the judges AGREED the officers violated the woman’s constitutional rights by using excessive force, I’d argue that you’re horribly wrong in your “assessment”.
For all your talk of nuance, you seem to miss the actual facts involved, instead choosing to substitute your own opinions.
If you think they are armed, hold your fire. If you are told they have a gun, hold your fire. If you see that they have a gun, hold your fire. If they point a gun at you, hold your fire. If they shoot at you, return fire . . . MAYBE! Those “dangerous urban areas” . . . they are full of PEOPLE, the vast majority of which have nothing to do with the guy shooting at you. So, if your backstop is clear, you have a clear visual and are taking fire, sure, shoot back.
If that is too tough for you, no shame. But, find another job. If I can abide by these rules as a mundane part of an SOP dealing with non-Americans who likely have military grade weaponry and are associated with a foreign military with which the U.S. has had aggressive contact, then any LEO worth his salt should agree that civilian populations of his own country deserve at least that much consideration. And let’s not go overboard about “danger”. Cops are less likely to die on the job than miners, construction worker, commercial fisherman, even cabbies. Plus, most cops that die in the line of duty do so in traffic accidents.
I don’t believe it reasonable to consider anyone “resisting” after getting tased. Tasers affect locomotion and awareness. You usually can’t do much of anything effectively after getting zapped. This makes them great for self-defense, but once someone has been hit, I don’t think their subsequent actions (or choices) are something you can fully hold them responsible for.
As a Canadian, I don’t know much about American policing. However, my impressions are that:
American police are underpaid. The job can be stressful and dangerous. Much of the work is likely mundane and dealing with unhappy people. Better pay would improve morale and may reduce problems and turnover.
Access to well-being and PTSD support varies from place to place. Both police and their families should have good access to psychological support. They deserve excellent health coverage.
Policing changes over time. There should be paid continuing educational support - allowing further training in fields such as social work, drug treatment, finance, accounting, cyberspace, languages, law, disaster planning or areas deemed locally or systemically relevant.
In general, I am not convinced American policing and judiciary are improved by overpoliticizing the process or public elections. But I don’t know a lot about this - I’m thinking of Joe Arpaio and how he might have run against a Democratic candidate, driving more extreme policy. How does it help to have a judge or sheriff identify as Democrat or Republican? Merit should matter more.
Police codes should be more rigidly enforced. I understand the blue line mentality given media coverage and job realities - but accountability and transparency would often encourage public confidence.
What? The cops have to hold their fire when someone is pointing a gun at them? Seriously? But you would graciously allow them to return fire if shot at, assuming you would agree if that shot did not hit them right between the eyes and kill them.
It is absurd what some people think cops should have to put up with. Why is it not too much to ask the lady to sign her fucking traffic citation?
No, the judges in an air conditioned office, sitting in a comfy chair behind a desk decided that they used excessive force. And that is fine, but it is a good reason for QI, so that decisions in the heat of the moment don’t rise to actionable offenses. And, she should have signed her fucking traffic citation. How hard is that?
So the judges, who were in no danger, decided the police officers, who were in no danger, real or imagined, were not in danger, and should not have repeatedly tazed a woman who didn’t get out of the car after being tazed?
Have you ever been tazed? Had to do anything requiring motor skills, like get out of a vehicle with one arm twisted behind your back?
But all that’s ok, because she didn’t sign a ticket. :rolleyes:
It’s possible even the first tasing was “required”, for various definitions of required that more closely resemble expedient.
Multiple tasings after the first are pointless. Anything after the first is almost guaranteed to be excessive, as you’re fairly incapable of doing jackshit immediately after being tased, especially while seated in a vehicle with your arm held.
What immediate danger were the police officers in that required multiple tasings, real or imagined? Fanciful ideas are irrelevant.
For not signing a ticket? Detain her until she realizes that she’s not going home. Anything else–tazing, twisting her arm, forcibly moving her around–is unreasonable.
It is not about danger to the officer in the first instance. The police are allowed to use reasonable force to effectuate an arrest. She’s sitting on her pregnant ass in the car refusing to move. She is forcing her 11 year old to witness his mother getting taken away. Some force is necessary and privileged to make the arrest. The officers do not need to wait for hours for her to decide to submit to the arrest under any circumstance.
As I said, they maybe/probably went too far, but that is QI; we don’t second guess that sitting behind a desk when these officers were in the middle of a fluid situation. And even if we do second guess, we don’t impose civil liability unless the offense was so egregious as to violate clearly established law.
It is her duty under the law to submit to the lawful arrest after she foolishly failed to sign the citation.
That’ll go over real good during the next school shooting. Or any situation where people get hurt or killed because an officer didn’t respond correctly to an obvious threat.
Once the criminal element realizes police officers are rarely shooting at them the rate of dead cops will at least duodecuple. And then what brilliant advice will you suggest?
So they’re allowed reasonable force, but if they use unreasonable force, that’s A-OK too, because heaven forbid those who are our first line in our justice system be expected to calmly evaluate a situation.
Unless you’re going to go back to “SHE MIGHT HAVE SHOT SOMEONE” from earlier, and clear and present danger requires they tase someone most likely physically unable to comply with their demands.
If one of the requirements to be a police officer is not to shoot someone until after he gets off the first shot, then pretty soon you won’t have anyone willing to be a police officer.
And you are correct, those “dangerous urban areas” are indeed full of PEOPLE. PEOPLE who are at risk of being shot if the bad guy shoots at a cop and misses.
Were you aware that, a significant portion of the time, the police shoot people who have already threatened or actually harmed other civilians? Check the Washington Post database of police shootings in 2019. 1004 people shot. 589 of them had guns and 171 had knives.
Another example is top heavy police departments. The one in our small city is grossly so when compared to NYC right across the river. Though I guess the thread supposes the main problem is excessive use of force or prejudicial patterns of arrest. I don’t think either of those are necessarily non problems but I tend to think both have become over-hyped and oversimplified. Anyway if higher pay for police (actually on the street) is proposed as a partial remedy for use of force/racism problems, then realistically you’d have to look at where to spend less money at the municipal level, as opposed to unrealistically assuming more would be spent. And top heavy as well as redundant organizations would be one place.
But I’ll be upfront, I’m very skeptical of ‘higher pay for police’ as a solution. There are municipalities which have specific problems because they won’t pay the going rate in their region. Whether just lifting police salaries everywhere would be accomplish anything meaningful in terms of use of force or even more so racial patterns of arrest*, I doubt that a lot more subject to some actual proof.
*where as an earlier post noted, it’s cartoonishly oversimplified to portray that as if equal rate of visible (to the police) violation of the law by all groups and the police just ignore it for some groups because they’re racist. There is no solution via better police work for disparate rates of arrest by ethnic and racial group. There’s the bad police work ‘solution’ of giving explicit or implicit racial quota’s for arrest. But the only productive solutions are above the level of the police, to some limited extent what the laws are (if things certain groups are much more likely to be validly arrested for under current law don’t really need to be illegal), but mainly much deeper disparities in society where it’s just going to corrode the police and justice system to make them the scapegoats for those disparities.