zlacker

>>mnm1+(OP)
I'm curious - it's obvious what abuses of qualified immunity are driving this, but the law must have been originally put in place for a reason. Are there any examples where a police officer was shielded from prosecution for something that, if you or I did it would definitely be a crime, but that a reasonable person would say, "yes, this is a good application of qualified immunity"?

>>comman+9m
Lets say you want to build a deck. You put together the plans, take them to the planning commission, and they rightfully reject it for being structually unsound.

Qualified immunity is what prevents you from personally suing each member of the planning commission to pressure them in to reversing their decision. Think of it like the legal system throwing an exception, we aren't even going to consider this because your beef is with the city not an individual employee.

Police have qualified immunity because otherwise they would face personal lawsuits every time they wrote a rich guy a speeding ticket, or a convicted murderer has nothing better to do but get his law degree in prison.

In my opinion, qualified immunity is _not_ the problem. If an officer does something in their official capacity that is wrong, it is up to the department and the DA to deal with. Just like if the hypothetical planning commission did something illegal. Unfortunately police unions prevent that from being a viable option.

>>dsl+Hq
A semi-joking suggestion I've heard with respect to police unions is to make the settlement agreements from police abuse cases come out of the union pension fund.

>>michae+Zt
While the idea has some merit in making the cost of repeat offenders expensive so that the force polices itself to protect their pensions, it is unfair to penalize those that have no control including officers that have already retired.

I think the best way forward is to force individual officers to carry liability insurance that covers settlements. This will have the effect of pricing out repeat offenders from the job.

>>gav+Mw
Penalizing the pension fund would give incentive for police officers to police bad apples and that's exactly what's lacking in cases like the Minneapolis.

Those other 3 officers (and the entire department) need to have skin in the game in that situation.

Yes retired officers should also be "reaping what they sow".

I don't know if would work in practice but there are multiple reasons to recommend it.

edit- just to be clear this would have to be negotiated as part of the union agreement and not something a court could just do.

>>WhatIs+Rz
A pension is an agreement between me and my employer to give me certain benefits after I retire. The pension fund, established by my employer to pay for my pension, doesn't really enter into it. Its existence is convenient for both of us to a certain extent, but it doesn't matter to me if the fund has a billion dollars or a million dollars. The boss still owes me what he promised either way.

The police pension funds work the same way. If the Minneapolis police pension fund was sued tomorrow and wiped out, the city still owes the police their pensions just the same as before. The money to pay those obligations has to come from somewhere. I suspect that it would come from the city.