
Police act like laws don't apply to them because of Qualified Immunity - lpolovets
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/30/police-george-floyd-qualified-immunity-supreme-court-column/5283349002/
======
remote_phone
They need to double the pay for cops and remove their protections like
qualified immunity and the right to fire if they feel threatened. This is the
only way we get higher quality cops in the system, we incentivize better
people to join with money. Maybe once we have a critical mass of great cops we
will need less cops overall.

All of these extra costs associated with overtime etc because of these riots
and looting are a direct result of employing shitty cops and completely
avoidable. The costs should be taken directly from the pension funds of cops
as far as I’m concerned, cities should not bear the costs of overtime because
of riots caused by cops killing people.

If we had a critical mass of good cops, we likely would need less overtime
overall because the relationship would be better between law enforcement and
citizens, especially minorities.

~~~
greedo
My neighbor is a Sargent in the local PD. Town of 300K. He made $140K last
year ($40K of it OT). I think the notion that police are underpaid is not
accurate, at least here.

~~~
remote_phone
My point is we should pay cops very high salaries, $300k+ to attract those
that might go into other professions.

~~~
corrys
You seem to equate high salary with compassion. What is this notion based on?

~~~
jadell
It's less about compassion and more about risk. Risk in the sense of the
physical danger an officer goes into, but also in the sense that we are
removing protections for the officer and holding them to a higher standard.

~~~
CameronNemo
The most common cause of death for police officers is traffic fatalities.
Should we pay highway construction crews 300K+?

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
That’s a terrible analogy. Obviously they’re more at risk of dying a violent
death and that’s why they need to pay more

~~~
giardini
Not really: they're safer at work than you are at home. Police work is very
safe in the USA. But it can be very unpleasant and stressful.

The idea that policing is inherently dangerous is most useful to police when
negotiating the next contract.

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
That is absolutely not true and I don’t know why you think that, other than
you’re super sheltered. You have no clue what you’re talking about

Tell me why the Mexican Mafia has no teeth. Enlighten me. Tell me why the
Aryan Brotherhood is less dangerous than Kubernetes

It’s not ever worth discussing with y’all, seriously. The privilege here is so
insane, you’ve obviously never been anywhere near a ghetto

------
hprotagonist
I have been meta-worried about the optics of protests because as a student of
history i see echoes of 1964 and 1968, and i am horrified at the idea of a
“law and order” second term.

USA Today publishing something like this does a bit to assuage my fears! For
the non-American HN audience, USA Today is the anodyne newspaper you get for
free at a business hotel chain with your crappy refrigerated muffin or yogurt
and instant coffee. It’s about as intentionally bland and inoffensive to
everyone newspaper as still exists.

If the message there is this, we might pull it off and meaningfully address
something instead of wanking about protestors like we usually do.

~~~
newacct583
I'll raise you one level of meta, and note how surprised I am that the
discourse right here on HN, which is normally populated heavily with a...
let's say reactionary conservative worldview... has swung hard to the "left"
on this issue and others in recent weeks.

Indeed the perception of "mainstream" seems to have shifted away from the
messaging the administration wants to present in lots of forums like this.

~~~
solveit
HN is more libertarian than conservative. The libertarianism often aligns HN
with conservatives, but HN and conservatives diverge wildly when it comes to
government overreach, whether that be police brutality, cryptography
regulation, or the war on drugs.

Note how even within the police brutality issue, HN is focusing on
organisational incentives for police recruiting and conduct instead of the
more mainstream race angle. HN believes in well-designed systems of
incentives. The (ideal of the) free market with appropriate minimal
regulations is the dream, which usually sides HN with small-c conservatives on
economic issues and even makes HN look reactionary from time to time.

Of course, as you say, the administration is anathema to any group of
intellectuals. And I'm sure previous administrations would have spun their
cases to be more appealing to HN and similar forums. But I don't think the
basic position of HN on police brutality is particularly new or surprising.

Disclaimer: Obviously HN is many people who have many opinions which I wrote
as a single entity for convenience.

------
stevehawk
They have immunity and no requirement to protect

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia)

~~~
ashtonkem
Which kinda seems like a bad deal for society. No guarantee of (an attempt at)
protection, but immunity for those who abuse the power of the state.

------
rayiner
It's sad to see how little progress has been made on concrete reforms that
would meaningfully reduce these problems. Curtailing qualified immunity, and
limiting the power of police unions to protect "bad apples" is something with
bi-partisan ideological support.

[https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/less-
government-m...](https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/less-government-
more-gorsuch)

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-
poli...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-
police/supreme-court-gives-police-green-light-shoot-first-and)

[https://www.cato.org/blog/why-qualified-
immunity](https://www.cato.org/blog/why-qualified-immunity)

You'd think reforms to qualified immunity--which everyone from the ACLU to
Heritage to Cato agrees on--would be on the fast track to legislation, at
least in left-leaning states. There is no reason a state like California,
where politicians habitually genuflect to social justice, couldn't pass
legislation to create causes of action against police officers that aren't
subject to the federal constitution's qualified immunity doctrine. None at
all. Instead, for some reason the debate is now about whether rioting and
property destruction is an acceptable response to police brutality--an extreme
position that is not going to carry the day with anyone but a tiny minority.

~~~
corrys
Police unions are the real problem in this situation. There will always be
criminal cops. As long as they are protected by corrupt and powerful unions -
they will have very little incentive to change.

~~~
newacct583
I don't know that the unions are the problem per se. They're just the face of
the advocacy for the interests of criminal cops (which isn't surprising: it's
literally their job to advocate for their members).

In fact when this gets polled, police rank and file are absolutely behind
their "bad apple" compatriots. There is deep mistrust of public oversight
within the law enforcement community as a whole, and that doesn't have to do
with their labor organization.

~~~
corrys
From my (limited) understanding of the role of police unions in cases like
that, they basically threaten local governments and demand no prosecution for
their members. They hold the keys to more public oversight and accountability.

------
darksaints
I'd like to point out that even when police officers have their hearts in the
right places, they don't do themselves any favors by going after those in blue
who abuse their power. We have heard countless stories of police officers that
crossed the blue line to do what was right, only for extreme retaliation to
occur, to the point of getting fired, harassed, assaulted, stalked, and even
murdered.

And the idea that people can just join the police force with good intentions
is fatally flawed. The police is a hierarchical organization with a culture
that is characterized by its top down command structure. In order to have any
influence at all, you have to be at the top...and by the time you get to the
top, you're assimilated into the culture. It is self perpetuating.

Absent of firing all the police and starting over from scratch (an option I'm
oddly not opposed to), I think the only way we can accomplish this is with
strong carrots and even stronger sticks. Taking away qualified immunity is
just the first step.

We have laws that punish doctors and lawyers and even commercial truck drivers
more harshly when they commit crimes that directly relate to their jobs, under
the premise that they know better and should be held to a higher standard. No
such laws exist for police, but they should.

I think most importantly though is that we need to protect those who break
ranks for good reasons. Retaliation, in any way, shape, or form, by police
officers for enforcing the law against another police officer, should be a
Class A felony with sentencing in the double digits. And we shouldn't just
stop there. Good cops that enforce the law against bad cops deserve our
protection, much like how we go out of our way to protect witnesses and
whistle-blowers.

And not only that, but there should _never_ be investigations into criminal
misconduct by a police officer by other police officers of the same
jurisdiction. Once it crosses the line from department policy violation to
criminal violation, that investigation should be handed over to a superceding
jurisdiction, and any local jurisdiction on the matter should be voided.

~~~
_bxg1
> firing all the police and starting over from scratch

I honestly think this might be the only true solution. We have to have police.
But right now we have such an entrenched, caustic, tribal, "swamp" of a
culture that I don't see how it could possibly be changed without first
draining it completely.

------
JadeNB
In other words, police act like laws don't apply to them because they _don 't_
(not in some "that's what it feels like" sense, but as a matter of precedent
and court finding). See starting at 3 here
[https://threader.app/thread/1266053291684827138](https://threader.app/thread/1266053291684827138)
, and the linked [https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-
poli...](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-police-
immunity-scotus) .

------
Ididntdothis
I don't want to excuse the abuses but I think in a sense the cops are the
victims of bad politics and management. Obviously shooting innocent people is
not acceptable but on the other hand they are being thrown into a bad
situation and don't get much help coping with that. I know a guy (very nice
guy) who started as a cop two years ago. Since then he had to shoot somebody
in the leg who attacked him with a knife, had to deal with a teenage girl
hanging herself, lots of domestic violence and a lot of other really bad stuff
that's very tough to deal with. They don't get any psychological counseling so
a lot of the old-timers are either alcoholics or have some other kind of
psychological damage.

In the end politics needs to have the courage to address the underfunding and
also address the training and management situation. They don't want to do
either because it may cost money so the bad situation just keeps going.
Reminds me of the healthcare situation where even the most blatant problems go
unaddressed because it's more important to do partisan fighting instead of
addressing issues. I think it's well understood that the drug laws are
damaging so it would be a good start to clean them up.

------
hedora
Call your representatives. Demand qualified immunity (and civil forfeiture) be
eliminated.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
It cannot be eliminated by legislation. It arises from a SCOTUS decision, and
can only be undone by them (at least in the broadest sense).

~~~
cataphract
This is not true. Only their interpretation of the Constitution cannot be
overridden by legislation (requires a constitutional amendment). Here, where
the Court is interpreting a federal statue, namely 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Congress
could in fact change the law to make it clear that the qualified immunity
defense the Court made up does not apply.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
This doesn't appear necessarily correct to me. The statute provides the basis
for a suit based on deprivation of rights. SCOTUS determined that (potentially
independently of any language in the statute) QI exists for various classes of
government officials.

Now, if SCOTUS's QI theory is based on the text of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 then
certainly the legislature could change/update/replace the statute with
something worded differently.

But it isn't clear that their decision is based on that (or any other) statute
at all. Some interpretations of Harlow vs Fitzgerald seem to point more to the
idea that SCOTUS decided that this immunity was derived from other aspects of
the totality of the constitution, USC and precedent. Others see it more the
way you suggest, which is that SCOTUS concluded that QI existed based on
specific statutory language.

Apparently, we don't have to wait _that_ long to find out, since they will be
reconsidering it starting tomorrow.

------
Consultant32452
Citizens should be able to pull some of their tax money away from ineffective
police departments to hold them accountable. There could be competing police
forces, all run by the government, and the citizens should get to fund the
ones they prefer, not unlike charter schools allow parents to fund the schools
they prefer, and food stamps allow the poor to buy the food they want from the
grocery store they prefer.

~~~
ashtonkem
It rankles me to no end knowing that I’m on the hook financially whenever cops
misbehave.

They should have to pay settlements personally.

------
ashtonkem
It is extremely hard to believe that we live in a lawful society if the
keepers of the peace are considered to be above the law.

------
jeffdavis
Isn't qualified immunity only for civil suits? Police can still be criminally
charged.

Perhaps police aren't charged criminally when they should be, but that doesn't
seem to be because of qualified immunity.

Suing over murder is not a great recourse, anyway. You still lost your loved
one, and the individual you sue probably can't pay you much.

~~~
_bxg1
> Perhaps police aren't charged criminally when they should be, but that
> doesn't seem to be because of qualified immunity.

But qualified immunity prevents those who _care_ to take recourse from
_acting_ to take recourse. That's the issue. The police virtually never bring
criminal charges against their own.

> and the individual you sue probably can't pay you much

I'm sure the police department can. They sure can afford military-grade gear.

~~~
jeffdavis
"But qualified immunity prevents those who care to take recourse from acting
to take recourse."

If a cop murders someone, we need a way to get them into prison, not a way to
sue them (or sue the taxpayers).

More bodycams, more dash cams. Maybe every arrest video should be reviewed by
an independent organization even without a complaint. Usually bad behavior
starts with little things, and its easier to correct before it escalates.

~~~
_bxg1
One thing I don't understand is why the taxpayer ends up paying settlements.
If I sue the individual, why does his employer (and therefore the employer's
funders) pay the settlement?

------
skadamou
Does anyone know some examples of organizations that work to change laws like
this? Or organizations that work with victims of police brutality to hold
perpetrators accountable?

I would like to support changing some of the things about our society that
contribute to overreach by police but it is hard to know where to begin

~~~
Covzire
It would probably need support from police/ex-police to be truly effective.
One of my in-laws was with the highway patrol for over a decade and it's
interesting how it changes someone when they're around crime all the time. It
does something to the human psyche to be around violent or dishonest people
all the time so it might be very difficult to find cops/excops to help reforms
because most have probably had their outlook of people/society permanently
changed, often for the worse.

~~~
smichel17
Right, this is why it's important for police to have other duties in their
communities in addition to fighting crime.

------
polynomial
TBF, Plato's Republic explicitly states the guardians of the Polis were not
subject to the same laws, and refers to the idea that there is no hierarchy as
the "noble lie."

~~~
reducesuffering
The "noble lie" was not that there's no hierarchy. It was that there was an
oracle that the city would be overthrown if the lowest rank became the
guardian or leaders of the city. This would lead the people to always let a
person's rank be formed appropriately. Higher rank parents would let their
offspring be lower rank, and lower rank parents would push their offspring to
the higher rank, as would the rest of society. Because they would all fear the
city being overthrown.

~~~
polynomial
And here we are.

------
dang
Related ongoing thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537)

------
masonic
Related, from earlier today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537)

------
cordite
Would military like training help? Drilling events, having high quality
roleplay? It's not like Nasa flies to space without drilling everything.

~~~
corrys
Help with what? Keep cops in shape? Absolutely. Make cops more compassionate?
Possibly not (not sure). Would it help to hold criminal cops accountable? No
relation to military training.

~~~
cordite
I guess more towards predictable and within expectations.

------
ykevinator
I don't know about the "because" part, I think the job attracts tough guys and
racists (not saying all cops are bad)

------
rowawey
It's entirely naïve to believe that an apartheid for the primary benefit of
the wealthy can or will ever be reformed from within. Citizens' United,
"campaign finance reform", lack of action on climate change, and many, many
other examples of the corrupting influences of the very rich will preclude
significant change because the status quo is how the aristocracy prefers it.
Voting/media-driven popularity contests masquerading as elections without exit
polls, protests, petitions, and nibbling around the periphery on small issues
like QI or as Rachel Maddow doesn't do a damn bit of good because the bigger
problem is who's in control: it's not We The People.

If a citizen really wanted change, voting, running for office, looting, and
peaceful protests with prayer sticks aren't the answer. There is no reforming
a system that has no mechanism for reforming pervasive corruption within and
above it! Therefore and unfortunately, the rich have left us with no other
answer other than focused, strategic rebellion, and overthrow of their greedy,
vampiric apartheid that too many people are blind to because it benefits them.
_Queue predictable pearl-clutchers and naysayers_

------
Pxtl
Oh, so Trump's supreme court gets to decide this? Yeah, in suuuuuuper
confident this will go well.

~~~
ta17711771
Why do I get the feeling you're not super familiar with the Supreme Court?

------
ineedasername
Maybe qualified immunity needs to be reduced in scope, but what is the
alternative? Without something like it, police might otherwise be held liable
for something like having to taser a violent person, only they hit their head
on the way down?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
In the current climate in the US, there will be lawyers eager to find any
possible grounds to file a lawsuit for stupendous amounts because the cop
looked at someone wrong, and hurt their fragile self-esteem (I exaggerate,
slightly). That's probably going to make an environment where police cannot
operate effectively. Yes, they'd be careful not to step across the line. But
they'd have to give no grounds for a lawyer looking for a payday to even be
able to _claim_ that they had stepped across the line.

The current abuses are horrible. But cops fearful of their own shadow is not a
better outcome for society.

~~~
corrys
You can already do that right now. You can already file a lawsuit for a
stupendous amounts because the cop looked at you the wrong way. Would the cop
get prosecuted? No. Losing qualified immunity doesn't mean that cops will
automatically be at fault for anything you desire. The laws would still exist.

------
qualifiedai
If your are angry about injustice it is wrong to be angry against police and
courts enforcing wrong laws.

Demand action from politicians to change those laws (e.g. remove qualified
immunity, etc). While protesting is important, engaging with your
representatives and VOTING is very important too.

~~~
WealthVsSurvive
Gerrymandering, mass surveillance, oligarch-owned news media that works in
conjunction with the state. VOTING doesn't do much. No confidence. They are
dismissed.

