Police officers are always being accused of using excessive force
when in most instances they used only the amount of force needed to
control a person who is resisting arrest
By Howie Katz
Big Jolly Tomes
June 17, 2020
Recently,
on BarkGrowlBite, I posted an article on former NYPD Commissioner Ray
Kelly which included his views on good and bad police reform proposals.
Kelly defended the much maligned practice of 'stop and frisk' tactics
as "a
tool that should be in the toolbox,"
Kelly expressed
his opposition to abolishing 'qualified immunity' for police
officers, which protects cops from many civil lawsuits. House Democrats
led by Nancy Pelosi have filed legislation that would abolish qualified
immunity for police officers. Kelly believes that is a recipe for
police inaction: “If you’re personally
liable and in a high-risk business, chances are your risk-taking is
going to be quite a bit less. I would say that’s
probably bad for society.”
On Monday, the Supreme
Court upheld qualified immunity by refusing to hear a slew of cases
against police officers that have been piling up before the court. The
court relied on Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982) in which it ruled that “government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are
shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does
not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of
which a reasonable person would have known.”
And while
the White House is open to police reforms, Trump’s press secretary
labeled proposals to reform qualified immunity as a “non-starter.”
Tom,
who comments on Big Jolly Times from time to time, responded to the
Kelly article y saying: "Qualified immunity has become a license for
police and other government
officials to crap all over the rights of citizens with no fear of civil
liability."
That is not correct. Cops can be sued if
they knowingly violated the constitutional rights of people. And so can
the cities and counties that employ those cops.
'Qualified'
is the key word. Qualified immunity does not protect bad cops.
Whenever bad cops are protected, it's because of negotiated police union
contracts and civil service rules.
Qualified immunity
protects cops from lawsuits based on spurious accusations. Let's take
excessive force. Police officers are always being accused of using
excessive force
when in most instances they used only the amount of force needed to
control a person who is resisting arrest.
In August 2014, NYPD cops tried to arrest
Eric Garner, a 400-pound giant. During a struggle when he resisted
arrest, officer Daniel Pantaleo applied what appeared to be a choke hold
while Garner uttered the now famous words: "I can't breathe." Pantaleo
was never charged by the DA or the Feds, but he was unjustly fired and
stripped of his pension in August 2019 at the insistence of
Sandinista-loving Mayor Bill de Blasio.
While the death
of Garner was a tragedy, Pantaleo's firing was a travesty. Until he
applied what may or not have been a choke hold, the other officers were
unable to control the"gentle giant" as Garner was described.
What
looks to bystanders as excessive force may actually be the force
officers had to use in order to control a person who is resisting
arrest.
Yes, cops do use excessive force, but they are not necessarily bad cops. Often
overlooked is what led a cop to kick the shit out of a suspect. Did
the suspect spit in the cop's face or kick him in he balls? Or did the
suspect flee in his car and during the chase endangered the lives of
innocent drivers and pedestrians? Yes, that pisses off the ops and
everyone knows that cops should never ever lose their tempers. But
losing one's temper is a human frailty and cops are not robots.
However, cops should never use excessive force when they get pissed off because a suspect called them vile names.
Police
officers are always confronted with spurious accusations, When I
seized heroin or other illicit drugs from a drug user or dealer, I was
almost always accused of planting the drugs, a standard defense at the
time. When cops arrest a woman, they are often accused of sexually
abusing the arrestee when nothing like that even remotely occurred.
Should cops face lawsuits for doing their job? Of course not! And that is why qualified immunity must be kept in place.
When
cops knowingly violate the constitutional rights of citizens, they can
be sued for their misconduct. Houston PD officer Gerald Goines and his
partner Steven Bryant should and can be sued by the families of Rhogena
Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle who were killed in the infamous Harding
Street raid. However, since Goines and Bryant do not have deep pockets,
any lawsuit will include the city and HPD.
But when
police officers do their job and something goes wrong if they make an
unintentional mistake, they should continue to be immune from lawsuits.
And they should continue to be protected against spurious accusations.
That's why qualified immunity must be kept in place.
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