I understand that the criminal justice system is very often lenient on police officers, and I'm strongly in favor of increased police accountability; however, there are still many cases of police officers going to prison and departments/municipalities being sued for police misconduct, so to say that there is no actual liability is hyperbole.
When they can kill someone who isn't a threat, on camera, and face no consequences, why would we expect them to face consequences for something like a frivolous arrest?
> On May 18, the court turned away three of these appeals, including a jaw-dropping case in which police were granted qualified immunity after literally stealing $225,000. (There is no clearly established right not to be robbed by cops, the court held.)
[1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/george-floyd-sup...
I don't doubt this, but I don't see how you get from there to "there is no liability at all".
> The present one is the first case I know of where anyone from inside the government actually called for an investigation, and it was probably because they were afraid of the very riot situation we now find ourselves in.
I'm not sure what you mean by "anyone from inside the government is called for an investigation"; do you mean you don't think police officers in these situations are never or rarely investigated, charged, etc? Or are you speaking about some other government official (and if so, I don't know what you're talking about specifically or how it relates to this broader conversation about liability).
> When they can kill someone who isn't a threat, on camera, and face no consequences, why would we expect them to face consequences for something like a frivolous arrest?
Your premise is wrong. A quick Google search turned up this collection of police department settlements[0] and this collection of police officers[1] charged in recent, high-profile killings.
Note that there is a middle ground between "there is no accountability" and "the system is working just fine"--we absolutely should increase police accountability, but "there is no liability/accountability" isn't accurate or helpful.
[0]: https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/1712-police-settl...
[1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cases-police-officers-ch...
In this particular instance, surely CNN has a strong case against the Minneapolis police department?
[0]: https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/1712-police-settl...
[1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cases-police-officers-ch...
Your link [1] shows how rarely police officers are found criminally liable for murder even in the most egregious of circumstances (only the most egregious ones are prosecuted at all and even most of those result in acquittals).
On the other hand you are right that link [0] shows that it is much more common that the police are found to have civil liability. Not personally, of course, the payments will come out of liability insurance (and, therefore, taxpayer coffers).
Now, if we'd looked at the statistics (homeownership gap, achievement gap in education) or listened to black Minnesotans, we'd know that we're not better than anyone else in the US. But there is at least a desire. We really do have folks in leadership who want to be/do better, even if we're failing at it.
> Not personally, of course, the payments will come out of liability insurance (and, therefore, taxpayer coffers).
I think this might actually be eminently desirable that the taxpayer is on the hook. We shoulder a lot of responsibility for our police (not the actions of any given officer, but the system that either fails to weed out 'bad apple' officers or fails to adequately train them or whatever other systemic failure is responsible) and it's right that we shoulder the cost for our lack of will to enact police reform or take it seriously. Of course, I don't think the liability--criminal or civil--is adequate in magnitude, and I would like to see more of both.
Just put the officers on the hook instead, reform done.
Doctors are on the hook for medical malpractice, works quite well and we still have doctors.
You are both right. However, in the article [1] a large number of police officers were either acquitted, are awaiting sentencing, or were not punished, what the general population would consider, fairly.
When we hear about police departments agreeing to settle - that does not give us, as a society, a closure. Individual police officers have committed crimes, but now the tax payers are paying for that? That's not accountability.
My position is that there is some accountability but it's not sufficient for any reasonable standard of justice.