Police Lobbies caught Blatantly mendacity to defend qualified Immunity

 As the PBWW website has reported, when it involves police accountability, one overarching question remains. ‘Do we would like to measure in an exceeding society whereby enforcement officials can completely violate a person’s constitutional rights and find away with it?’ For our society to be free, the solution to its question must be a convincing, powerful, unwavering, ‘Hell No!’ Sadly, police in America who violate the rights of citizens currently enjoy this lack of accountability all due to the incredibly flawed legal doctrine of Qualified Immunity.

The Supreme Court created qualified immunity in 1982. therewith a novel invention, the court granted all establishment immunity for violating constitutional and civil rights unless the victims of these violations can show that the rights were “clearly established.”

The court held in Harlow v. Fitzgerald that government actors are entitled to the current immunity because of the “need to shield officials who are required to exercise discretion and therefore the related public interest in encouraging the vigorous exercise of official authority.”

“Government officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct doesn't violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which an inexpensive person would have known.”

As Anya Bidwell points out, although innocuous sounding, the clearly established test could be a legal obstacle nearly impossible to beat. It requires a victim to spot an earlier decision by the Supreme Court, or a federal tribunal within the same jurisdiction holding that precisely the identical conduct under the identical circumstances is prohibited or unconstitutional. If none exists, the official is immune. Whether the official’s actions are unconstitutional, intentional, or malicious is irrelevant to the test.

The subject of Qualified Immunity recently began receiving much-needed scrutiny after the death of George Floyd. A bipartisan push began across the country to get rid of the power of cops to abuse the doctrine essentially granting them immunity to inflict violent punishment on often innocent people ciao as that very same violations of rights haven’t taken place in this same jurisdiction.

As we reported in June, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed an omnibus reform bill into law to finish qualified immunity for law enforcement officials within the state.

“This may be a long-overdue moment of national reflection,” Polis said at the signing ceremony. “This may be a meaningful, substantial reform bill.” Indeed it absolutely was.

Other municipalities have followed the same path since then with federal judges moving to eliminate it on a national scale.

Not surprisingly, the push to require away their pass to violate rights and abuse the rights of citizens has garnered the eye of the police unions. And, also not surprisingly, they're deceiving people into keeping it.

In a recent report from the CATO Institute, policy analyst Jay Schweikert detailed a number of the blatant “misrepresentations” utilized by police unions to justify keeping Qualified Immunity.

The National Association of Police Organizations (“NAPO”), submitted a letter to Congress to elucidate their opposition to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which might eliminate qualified immunity for enforcement officials. The letter falsely claimed that if this doctrine is ended, cops can head to jail for simply doing their jobs.

With the change to qualified immunity, an official can head to prison for an unintentional act that unknowingly broke an unknown law. We believe in holding officers answerable for their actions, but the consequence of this might be making criminals out of decent cops enforcing the laws in honestness.

As Schweikert points out, the letter was written and signed by William F. Johnson, NAPO’s executive, and General Counsel. Given Johnson’s history as a former prosecutor, the thought of him claiming he's unaware that qualified immunity may be a civil doctrine and not wont to bar legal action of cops is either glaring incompetence or blatant misinformation.

He didn’t just say it within the letter to Congress, either, Johnson doubled down on his falsehoods in an interview with the Washington Times:

You’ve got federal lawmakers proposing a federal law that says that even when the federal law is so unclear on be unknowable by any reasonable officer, that officer can still head to prison for an unintentional act that unknowingly broke an unknown law.

Schweikert accurately calls this assertion by Johnson, “astounding,” adding that “one of the biggest police organizations within the country is opposing qualified immunity reform supported the clearly erroneous assertion that the doctrine has anything to try to to with action at law.”

But that’s not all, the police union that represents Massachusetts also chimed in with their version of disinformation too.

“To be clear, Qualified Immunity is bedrock protection extended to all or any public employees. Not just cops. It doesn't protect bad cops. In fact, it only protects cops who act reasonably and within the principles and regulations of their respective departments.”

The first portion of this statement is true, Qualified Immunity is extended to any or all government workers. However, as Schweikert notes, the second part is “nonsense.”

“The claim that qualified immunity only applies when officers “act reasonably and within the principles and regulations of their respective departments” may be a pure invention, directly at odds with actual case law,” he writes.

The Indiana State Police Association (“ISPA”) jumped on board too and made this false assertion too.

“While there's little question that bad actors have brought this issue to the forefront, we believe that qualified immunity serves to safeguard all law enforcement officials legitimately performing their duties, and it allows the general public to recover damages in cases where an official has violated the person’s rights.” [Emphasis added]

Schweikert points out that “this isn't just wrong, it's basically the precise opposite of what qualified immunity actually does.”

Either these top cops are completely uninformed about what qualified immunity does or they're engaging during a campaign of disinformation to guard themselves by attempting to assert that qualified immunity to there to guard good cops who don’t break the law. this can be utter nonsense as qualified immunity isn't permanently cops who haven’t broken the law, it directly applies to cops who have broken the law but have done so during a situation that wasn't “clearly established.”

Nevertheless, even the Deputy Attorney General of The u. s., Jeffrey Rosen, made similar misrepresentations, noting:

Qualified immunity may be a legal doctrine that forestalls law-enforcement officers and other officials from being personally subjected to civil lawsuits once they have acted lawfully and haven’t violated clearly established rights. . . . Officers should be — and are — held accountable once they violate the law. They shouldn’t even have to stress about being personally sued for doing their jobs after they follow the law.

Again, this is often simply not true and Rosen, a former adjunct law professor at Georgetown, most certainly knows better.

Mike Maharrey at the Tenth Amendment Center, sums up this disinformation campaign quite accurately:

Police organizations are among the foremost powerful lobbyists within the American social group and that they nearly always oppose reforms that might strengthen the protection of individual rights. they often lobby against asset forfeiture reform, limits on surveillance, ending police militarization, barring enforcement of unconstitutional regulating, and anything which will limit the growing national one-man rule.

And as we've seen – they don’t hesitate to misrepresent the facts so as to dam necessary reforms.