QUALIFIED IMMUNITY, ABANDON AT YOUR RISK

  Qualified immunity for police officers is a protocol that protects government officials against liability in the civil courts.  We arm and train police officers to enforce laws our legislators and local governments enact.  We endow these individuals with the power to detain and arrest individuals who break our laws.  If in conducting these functions we delegate to them,  they cause harm or alleged harm their exposure to being sued is limited by a protocol termed qualified immunity.  That limitation is not absolute. If a police officer has violated a citizen’s  rights or other laws they can be disciplined and sued or indicted for a criminal act,  as many have been. 

But citizens who actually pay taxes and fees for the city police force expect  police protection. Such a service is an absolute necessity for a civil society to exist. . Citizens should also be aware that qualified immunity serves their best interest.  for without QI  the effectiveness of the police force dramatically declined. 

In 1967 the Supreme Court justified the need for qualified immunity for police  from civil lawsuits by stating that a police officer is placed into an untenable position when he may be charged with dereliction of duty if “he does not arrest when he has probable cause and may be punished with damages if he does”.   The unprotected police officer, beside taking on a hazardous profession without QI is placed into untenable legal jeopardy—that is: between a “rock and hard place”, it changes his or her attitude toward policing. 

It was clear in 1967 that if we wanted to have a functioning police force,  an effective police force, we had to protect police officers from harassment, and from frivolous civil  suits.  

Nothing has changed. These circumstances in 2021are no different than 1967. 

Furthermore,  it was clear to the Court in 1967 that without such protection, essential in any civil society,  it would be very difficult to encourage citizens to even take on such a hazardous occupations

For citizens who pay taxes for services (and expect a return for the outlay )  a police force bereft of a qualified immunity clause is  simply a bad deal.  

During the riots in NYC in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder,  the videos of the manner in which the police reacted (or became passive observers of crime) was telling. 

Police were video taped being beaten, their cars burned and their precincts houses attacked. They acted  only as observers to the attacks on their own persons, on City property and attacks on private citizens,  some of whom were severely beaten or killed by the rioters as the police officers walked away or turned their backs. That is what we can expect when protection for police is removed. 

In cities or states where qualified immunity is abandoned  expect crime to soar, business to decline, tax revenues to shrivel, civility and safety for residents  to plummet, and frivolous suits to metastasize.  

In Pierson v. Ray (1967), the Supreme Court first justified the need for qualified immunity from civil rights violation lawsuits for law enforcement officers by arguing that "[a] policeman’s lot is not so unhappy that he must choose between being charged with dereliction of duty if he does not arrest when he had probable cause, and being punished with damages if he does."[5]