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.
Exactly: this should really be in the realm of criminal prosecution, not civil suits, in which case the positives of qualified immunity could remain in place. But we have such a toxic, broken, in-group culture in our police force that we cannot rely on self-directed justice to happen. So I think we have no other option but to open the floodgates on civil suits.
They have zero incentive to do this.
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.
The commenter is saying that the fact that this isn't a valid lawsuit is what is meant by qualified immunity, I believe.
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.
One idea: If a lawyer brings n invalid lawsuits within m months (where n, m are magic numbers, n preferably under three, m preferably over twelve), the lawyer gets disbarred. The only problem is: who decides whether a lawsuit is valid? Is there an objective way to judge this?
Well, police unions, district attorneys, judges, elected officials, and the political process itself. Oh, and the police themselves. Without the cooperation of the entire system, police unions have little power over situations involving illegal acts.
Bad police should get priced out of the job as their insurance premiums make the job less and less profitable.
The worst should become unemployable as police when they become uninsurable.
Getting sued is expensive, stressful, and time consuming no matter how the case turns out.
If you sue all the commissioners every time they issue a decision that you don't like sooner or later they'll see your next request and think "Can I afford the inevitable lawsuit if I say No like I should?" and/or "Can I take the stress? Can my family?" So next time they'll give you what you want just to avoid that whole mess.
IANAL but it sounds like qualified immunity is intended to short-circuit this: even if you made a reasonable mistake here and there you can't be sued by some bullying jerk.
In theory, elected officials and journalists should be able to keep police force in check. But in reality, if you make enemy of your local police force, life is going to be very hard for you.
A friend gave up on journalism, in major part due to her stint at reporting on local police issues.
They have more control over the behavior of current police officers than I do.
Believe me, if bad cops start taking money out of the pockets of the rest of the police, actual reform would come much quicker.
Same reason the entire football team has to take a lap when one person is screwing around. That person quickly becomes unpopular.
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.
Anyone can make a complaint to them, and they will investigate, and if they believe the law has been broken, can prosecute individuals (in a regular court) or fine police departments as they see fit.
An anti-slapp law provides a short-circuit motion to dismiss. But the legal merits are still evaluated–just much earlier. An anti-slapp motion basically says: "Even if everything the plaintiff said were true, it's not legally actionable so end the case now".
Qualified Immunity is insane because it doesn't require a legal evaluation of the case. Qualified Immunity (practically) says: "because this exact fact pattern hasn't been tested before, the officer couldn't have known it was specifically wrong. Since the officer couldn't have known it was specifically wrong, we don't need to go any further".
That means, a case dismissed because of QI doesn't even end up demonstrating that the fact pattern was legally wrong!
It would absolutely have to be part of the negotiated agreement with the police unions and yes the retired officers of 2040 should be impacted.
This would imply the tactic works (and that IRS agents probably need more protection too).
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-13-mn-861-st...
Standing: without a reason that looks remotely viable, a court might just throw it out without requiring a defence.
Risk: big companies have legal departments on hand to make your life hell for even trying.
Reward: smaller companies don’t have enough money to be worth your time to sue. Even if you’re trying to “send a message” the first attempt is so expensive for no gain, it’s not worth your while.
Government departments tend to fall into a bad middle ground. There’s enough money to be worth fighting over but they’re not always fantastically well equipped to defend it (or at least they’re perceived as such).
I could see a strategy here being to make the case seem invalid (by some definition) as the defence, essentially playing the man and not the ball.
I don't have good sound proposals, but bonuses for positive steps might be a good start.
Of course, this is completely different from the idea of QI, which, having worked for the federal government, I can see why it's important. Even if it has been over-applied.
While I believe that the "bad apples" among the police force is relatively rare, the fact that the rest of the force is to some degree resisting attempts to root them out makes them complicit in the acts to some degree.
Both my parents were retired Police, and I know there's a lot of good people that work in those fields. I also know that not every community, situation or person is the same and there are a lot of people on power trips that even fellow cops don't always like. It's often hard to speak out from within a group.
Some of the more recent events are particularly grievous and should absolutely be prosecuted... There are many more incidents that should be as well. I tend to say it's rarely (though sometimes is) about race, it's usually a matter of blue vs everyone else.
As a practical matter, if there is possible liability, everyone will have to have liability insurance, just as in the medical professions, for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...
> In the United States, the federal government has sovereign immunity and may not be sued unless it has waived its immunity or consented to suit.[7] The United States as a sovereign is immune from suit unless it unequivocally consents to being sued.[8] The United States Supreme Court in Price v. United States observed: "It is an axiom of our jurisprudence. The government is not liable to suit unless it consents thereto, and its liability in suit cannot be extended beyond the plain language of the statute authorizing it."[9]
The only reason the United States can legally appear as a defendant in a civil suit currently is because Congress has consented to being sued:
> The United States has waived sovereign immunity to a limited extent, mainly through the Federal Tort Claims Act, which waives the immunity if a tortious act of a federal employee causes damage, and the Tucker Act, which waives the immunity over claims arising out of contracts to which the federal government is a party. The Federal Tort Claims Act and the Tucker Act are not the broad waivers of sovereign immunity they might appear to be, as there are a number of statutory exceptions and judicially fashioned limiting doctrines applicable to both. Title 28 U.S.C. § 1331 confers federal question jurisdiction on district courts, but this statute has been held not to be a blanket waiver of sovereign immunity on the part of the federal government.
But in general, the government of the United states is immune from civil suits, and Congress can decide at any time -- even during an active case -- to decide to not want to be sued anymore.
The governments of the states -- being the ultimate sovereign authority of the United States of America -- are also generally immune from civil suit, except in limited circumstances. I believe most have however consented to being sued.
On this matter, the supreme court has said:
> we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact; that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the "plan of the convention." States may consent to suit, and therefore waive their Eleventh Amendment immunity by removing a case from state court to federal court.
Every police department with more than a couple officers has an official structure for reporting abuse to leadership (either police leadership, or civilian leadership). State agencies and police forces absolutely have jurisdiction to investigate local departments, and the FBI and DOJ can investigate anyone they want.
I suspect the mistake in the US is that all the people who could punish the police are 'too busy' with other things. Make a dedicated team who has nothing else to do, and suddenly they'll be snooping around like journalists looking for dirt so they can make a conviction and get a promotion.
FBI doesn't want to investigate LAPD. They need LAPD, down the line, when there's some case for which they'll need cooperation.
What's needed is a Federal policing agency tasked with investigating and prosecuting police misconduct. That's the whole remit; police misconduct is their alcohol, tobacco, and firearms.