zlacker

>>sorami+(OP)
As so many of these incidents have happened over the last few days it seems like there should be a law that heightens the penalties when cops attack the press compared to the current penalties.

>>MBCook+Od
No thanks.

We already have tons of statutes for all sorts of assault/battery with modifiers if they are done using lethal weapons.

Police have already been demanding that "hate crime" laws (which are historically limited to who you are, not your profession or your choices) be amended for extra harsh punishment for attacks on police officers (despite many other existing statutes with similar purposes).

In the end, prosecutions of police with harsher statutes don't matter unless the conviction rate goes up. Right now, convictions of officers for actions done while in uniform are astronomically low. We need to work the other parts of the problem (gathering evidence, getting police to stand witness against other police, getting DAs to actually charge and push for convictions, firing of officers for conduct unbecoming an officer, etc).

>>thephy+2i
Well a big problem not included in your post is that police officers can't face liability for violating people's rights in many cases because of qualified immunity.

>>zucker+Wj
Qualified immunity is qualified, not absolute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

"Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine in United States federal law that shields government officials from being sued for discretionary actions performed within their official capacity, unless their actions violated "clearly established" federal law or constitutional rights. Qualified immunity thus protects officials who "make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions", but does not protect "the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law"."

Is the bill of rights not "clearly established"? They've had long enough.

To me the phrasing seems clear, it's a lack of political will that's the issue. Not the law.

>>hnick+En1
The standard of the Supreme Court has established for "clearly established" is very hard to meet. For most cases, there has to a prior court cases with facts that match closely with the case at hand. For example,

https://reason.com/2020/05/19/qualified-immunity-supreme-cou...

Plus, I've seen little textual basis for qualified immunity at all.