The Basic Fallacy Of Police “Qualified Immunity”. Please Read

Believe me brothers and sisters, I have been thinking long and hard about this for days since the brutal slaughter of Tyre Nichols by a rogue band of street thugs with badges. In the following days, the civil rights activist has only grown for congress to get off of their asses and pass the George Floyd Police Reform Act. But when it comes to the GOP, there’s a poison pill in the bill, and it’s pissing me off.

The poison pill is, of course qualified immunity. In its simplest form, the logic is that because police have such a difficult job, and can be forced to make life and death decisions at any moment, they shouldn’t be held personally liable in a civil court for the shitty decisions they make on the job. They can be criminally liable, and families can sue the police, so that should be enough for anybody.

Two words. Happy. Horseshit. Because it burnishes their street cred with cops, whenever the GOP talks about it, they like to call it The Doctrine of Qualified Immunity, like this was some nationally recognized precedent, sanctified by the Supreme Court, and therefore inviolate. And nothing could be further from the truth.

There is no Doctrine of Qualified Immunity! It has never been before the Supreme Court. What it is is a legal concept. The result of a widely disparate patchwork of lower state court judicial rulings in pending civil cases against officers.To show you how patchwork this is, recently the New York City Council passed a law outlawing Qualified Immunity in city filed court cases against cops in civil court.

The conservative judicial prattle is that because cops have tough jobs, allegedly exposing their lives to danger in every civilian interaction, they should be excused for going all Rambo on an unarmed civilian, usually a black or brown one, just because they didn’t get laid last night.

But you know what? None of the cops are Russian conscripts, being trucked across the border into Ukraine to fight in an active fire combat zone. None of them were dragooned into joining the police department at gunpoint. They went into policing voluntarily, and they all went through a comprehensive training program at the police academy that featured courses on de-escalation and non-confrontation, but not about escalation. And most importantly, when they graduate, they’re not going into live fire combat situations, instead they’re going into civilian neighborhoods, stuffed full of people who actually pay their salaries!

But here’s my point. You know who else puts their lives on the line every time they walk out the door in the morning? United States soldiers! And like the domestic police, they are exquisitely trained, including courses on de-escalation and non-confrontation. But unlike civilian police, you know that United States soldiers don’t have? The Doctrine of Qualified Immunity.

Instead they have the Military Code of Conduct. When US soldiers leave their firebase to go on patrol, they literally can’t fire their weapons. There is a strip of tape over the top shell in their cartridge, it can’t lock-and-load. It is only on orders from a NCO or officer that they can strip that tape and put their weapons in live fire mode.

And the Rules of Conduct are specific and crystal lear. A soldier is forbidden to target a potential enemy until he can clearly identify an offensive weapon, in a position to do him deadly harm. Why do you think we had so many fallen fucking heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you’re in the army, you play by the rules, no ifs-ands-or-buts. You’re a US soldier for Christs sake!

And if a soldier or two goes to Memphis, and commits a war atrocity against unarmed civilians? No Qualified Immunity for you, chump. You risk being put in shackles, relieved of duty, and sent back to the United States to face the Military Criminal Justice System. And if they’re found guilty, they can literally risk decades in prison, be stripped of their rank, lose their years of service towards a military pension and benefits, and given a dishonorable discharge, making civilian employment next to impossible. Meh. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?

So please, Republicans and law-and-order judges, spare me your blatant sophistry bullshit. When US cops hit the streets, they don’t do it in in Baghdad or Fallujah, in Kabul or Kandahar province. They do it in Cleveland, or Brooklyn, or Chicago or Minneapolis. And there is no way that a traffic stop for an illegal right turn matches the danger of a covered truck rolling up to a Green Zone checkpoint. This is pure, unadulterated bullshit.
And the GOP needs to get its head out of its ass, qnd remember who they represent! End of rant.