Qualified immunity is kind of a red herring. Yes, it's important for citizens to be able to sue police, but unless those damages roll uphill they will often just be suing judgement-proof cops.
The other issue, the issue that's on everyone's mind this week, is criminal cases. Police don't avoid prison or criminal cases because of qualified immunity, but because they are not charged in the first place.
Criminal cases are a red herring. We need to address the structures and institutions that make tasing pregnant women possible.
Let's put it like this: if you came into your office one morning and the guys in the cubicles next to you are shooting up black tar heroin (and no one acts like they're doing anything wrong), does the problem lie with the individuals or with the corporation?
If criminal cases are a red herring, then why do we even need laws or police at all?
It's eminently possible for anyone to go around tasing anyone else. Law enforcement fundamentally relies on post-facto punishment. Most people don't tase pregnant women due to a sense of common decency, but most of the remaining don't do so because of the threat of punishment. When you remove the threat of punishment, it allows the deviant group to act out their desires with literal impunity.
I want all the brutality to stop, not just the murders. Any effort to prosecute will get so watered down that only the worst will be punished so we can act like we're doing something about the problem.
You can make that general argument about any single approach to reform. Let's not put all our hopes in any one single solution, and let's not be misled into false dichotomies.
It's exactly this line of thinking that will tell people the problem is solved once those four policemen are convicted. If a gang is terrorizing people, does the problem go away when you put a few members in jail?
If I can continue your analogy (though I admit it's a little confusing) - if a gang member is caught breaking the law and we have another law preventing prosecution, let's fix that bug.
Structural issues which create gangs need to be addressed, and it's true that convicting the gang members might detract from the need for those structural reform, but enforcing laws is still a part of the incentive system we have to encourage people to not break the law.
We should fix structural issues, but that doesn't mean we need to leave clear bugs in tact to increase pressure on fixing those issues.
... is there a problem at all? If all they're doing is shooting up then the problem, if any, lies within the observer's mind. OTOH if they get so high they can't perform their job, and the corporation still doesn't care, then I guess there's an issue somewhere. But I don't know if heroin is the problem; if my coworkers aren't doing their job because they would rather play Snood that's equally as bad.
To address that I feel like you have to ask what would moving officers to pursue the issue that way. I suspect part of the answer is quotas and a “never back down” mindset.
QI seems like the bandaid. If you don’t push hostile policing, maybe you don’t get hostile police.
I disagree with the conclusion that qualified immunity is unimportant. It's one small facet of a system which encourages hostile policing. Others include the practice of exclusively hiring veterans, access to military gear, friendly relations between police and local officials, and the nature of their training and culture. To some extent, these things reinforce one another. I think the larger problem can only be addressed by tackling the smaller problems one-by-one.
I suspect that policing practices became hostile first and QI is the legal loophole to get away with it. If you eliminate it the “system” will find another way to do it. “Active” policing is a lot of “cleaning up the neighborhood” and “maintaining property value”. As long is that is the part of the goal there will be away to protect police.
Get rid of QI and then let the departments decide whether or not to make the individuals pay. In either case there is someone with incentive to get rid of bad apples, which is better than no-one.
Once we get rid of QI (which we obviously should because it has warped into a nonsensical concept), is there any reason to believe that the police unions won't end up shoving indemnification clauses into their contracts, putting us right back to where we are?
That’s already the case. QI doesn’t prevent anyone from suing the department or city. It only prevents them suing the cop. A system in which all cops are indemnified is simply QI with more paperwork.
I disagree that municipalities would have much of a choice. Right now, a municipality is theoretically liable for every officer's actions, and could contractually share some of that liability onto the officers themselves. Yet they do not, presumably because the police unions do not allow it, and the system as a whole is great at shirking all liability for its misdeeds. Getting rid of QI does change the default option, but I would assume the unions would use the same negotiation techniques to get indemnification clauses.
>Firming up what had long been held as common practice, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 ruled in Imbler v. Pachtman that prosecutors cannot face civil lawsuits for prosecutorial abuses, no matter how severe
What other job exists on the face of the planet where there's such a strong guarantee and therefore so much moral hazard?
Normally I would consider this off-topic, but prosecutors depend on relationships with law enforcement to try and argue court cases. Corruption and abuses are people problems, as much as institutional problems. It’s important to align incentives toward justice in all areas of the justice system.
The other issue, the issue that's on everyone's mind this week, is criminal cases. Police don't avoid prison or criminal cases because of qualified immunity, but because they are not charged in the first place.