How much time do you have? 😂
May 28, 2020 6:24 PM   Subscribe

T. Greg Doucette, regular member of #LawTwitter and Vic Migonga/Ty Beard commentator par excellence, gets asked what might we do to stop the takeover of the police and the judiciary by white supremacy. Greg replies with an epic 15 point thread.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock (42 comments total) 90 users marked this as a favorite
 
But who will pay for it 😩
posted by Reyturner at 6:53 PM on May 28, 2020


This is great, thank you! Love that he links out to research, other websites!
posted by esoteric things at 6:55 PM on May 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


Damn, that is depressing to read: the machinery in place to preserve police power is enormous and part of our very fundamental systems (courts, etc.) And the whole situation -- like gun violence, unsurprisingly -- is so hard to even examine because:
Like COVID testing, you can't tell how bad something is if you can't measure it
*bangs head on desk*
posted by wenestvedt at 7:01 PM on May 28, 2020 [17 favorites]


A large part of why the courts are so receptive to the police is that judges are traditionally drawn from the prosecutorial community, which has massive issues with being overly close to the police.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:08 PM on May 28, 2020 [19 favorites]


Not a whole lot New here, I recommend wyatt cenac's Problem Areas, season one. Man did a whole season of TV investigation into issues with the police. although he missed qualified immunity, most every other issue listed is dealt with in depth
posted by eustatic at 7:50 PM on May 28, 2020 [8 favorites]


I actually find this the opposite of depressing - I find it inspiring and motivating.

A whole list of stuff for me to write to my elected officials about, all well researched and footnoted!

I've led a very privileged life, with very minimal interaction with police. This is extremely useful and helpful for me, pointing out specific, actionable problems that I can try to contribute to changing.

Thank you so much for posting this, Your Childhood Pet Rock!
posted by kristi at 7:59 PM on May 28, 2020 [28 favorites]


the catch 22 nature of qualified immunity is so frustrating.

That said, am I right in understanding Harlow v. Fitzgerald didn't say that all lawsuits were subject to qualified immunity, but only that officials were shielded from liability for civil damages? Has qualified immunity been extended beyond that to limit things like equitable remedies, or declaratory judgments?
posted by gryftir at 8:05 PM on May 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


I'd argue the sentences for crimes by police – and crimes by all public servants tbh – should actually be *more* harsh. Because they're violating public trust in addition to the law

I've said before that there's an unspoken divide in discussions of police misconduct between the people who think "under color of authority" is a mitigating factor and those who think it's an aggravating factor.
posted by The Tensor at 8:14 PM on May 28, 2020 [58 favorites]


Something he misses that's been on my mind: it's possible that policing draws certain psych profiles that aren't consciously racist but are more susceptible to subconscious biases.

Like, if you look at the moral foundations theory popularized by Haidt, we've got care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity. Racism can be understood as ingroup loyalty and possibly sanctity gone awry, and the later three tend to be bundled together (and correlated with somewhat lower measures for the first two). And I'd bet the primary draws for becoming an officer are correlated with authority and care.

Or if you look at it through the lens of Lakoff's political conceptual metaphor theory, which do you think police recruits are more likely to come from, "strict father" or "nurturing parent"? I doubt it's universal (and Lakoff himself is quick to point out a middling-majority live by both metaphors in different social context) but I'd be willing to bet that there's a definite tendency, and that matters when it comes to how people are perceived as outsiders.

I think it's possible that we need psych screening for recruits. Partly to screen out some who are too far from median, partly as a form of affirmative action for profiles highly valuing protection & justice.

Or we could require officers to come into the field via social work.
posted by wildblueyonder at 8:22 PM on May 28, 2020 [12 favorites]


Something he misses that's been on my mind: it's possible that policing draws certain psych profiles that aren't consciously racist but are more susceptible to subconscious biases.

Don't the psych tests weed out people who are too smart and empathetic?
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:32 PM on May 28, 2020 [12 favorites]


I'm not sure if knowing your police officer is merely biased rather than truly racist is much comfort when he's kneeling on your neck.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:32 PM on May 28, 2020 [22 favorites]


Heh. Overt racism in recruits is clearly a problem, as well as temperament that makes it easy to slide towards racism.

Don't the psych tests weed out people who are too smart and empathetic?

Did not know this. Apparently it's legal to use an IQ ceiling.
posted by wildblueyonder at 8:55 PM on May 28, 2020 [11 favorites]


I've said before that there's an unspoken divide in discussions of police misconduct between the people who think "under color of authority" is a mitigating factor and those who think it's an aggravating factor.

We just need to make the Spider-Man principle into law: with great power comes great responsibility.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:29 PM on May 28, 2020 [10 favorites]


We just need to make the Spider-Man principle into law: with great power comes great responsibility.

Damn Marvel with their SJW propaganda.N.B. THIS IS SARCASM
Next thing you know they'll be making allegories about the civil rights movement using characters relatable to white people!
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:48 PM on May 28, 2020 [14 favorites]


fwiw...
-Why Cato Took on Qualified Immunity
-Supreme Court Will Soon Decide Whether To Reconsider Qualified Immunity
-SCOTUS Once Again Reschedules (Most Of) Its Qualified Immunity Cases
-SCOTUS Continues To Delay Qualified Immunity Cert Petitions
-Unlawful Shield
posted by kliuless at 1:47 AM on May 29, 2020 [11 favorites]


There really should be branches of the FBI and DC cops devoted to doing to Supreme Court justices whatever they've said is legal or unpunishable for cops to do to little people.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:01 AM on May 29, 2020 [14 favorites]


Instant Categorical Imperative.
posted by Horkus at 4:58 AM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm still working my way down the thread but this stopped me short:

Police should have at least a 4-year college degree. Not b/c those degrees are particularly relevant to the job, but b/c the life experience from being in college for that timespan – being around people who aren't like you, navigating conflict, etc – matters

WTF? WTF?
posted by MiraK at 5:51 AM on May 29, 2020 [7 favorites]


Police officers are less likely to escalate and kill people when it's their neighbors that they're dealing with

Yeah but police officers cannot be trusted to intervene effectively in domestic violence when they are policing their neighbors. You just spent the weekend drinking beer with the guy who punched his wife, the wife isn't going to be able to make a report to you.

There's got to be a combination of community members and total outsiders working in pairs, perhaps. Police should never be predominantly from the community they serve.
posted by MiraK at 5:57 AM on May 29, 2020 [7 favorites]


Or we could just get rid of them.
posted by Automocar at 6:38 AM on May 29, 2020 [8 favorites]


WTF? WTF?

There's a couple of different aspects here. If you want professionalism in a police environment you need to have proper training outside "this is how all the people are GOING TO SHOOT YOU". German police for instance get 130 weeks of training which is 3.6 academic years in the US.

Secondly, it stops or at least slows down the potential authoritarians taking the high school to police pipeline route. Not trying to paint with a broad brush but being 22 and having the modicum of intelligence to make it into a college or vocational school would weed out a lot of the chaff.

That being said, an individual four year degree requirement would instantly entrench white and Asian people in the police force as Latino and Black people both lag in acquiring four year degrees c/o systemic racism and the social issues that work towards stopping them from moving upward in social mobility.

What we really need is the police academy to be handled within the colleges themselves. Public colleges can do wonders here in having the first two years set entirely in the classroom teaching skills like empathy and communication. Then, once they've had a chance to spend two years in the classroom, and only then start with the tactical/weapons training stuff. We need to teach our police to think critically and problem solve, not just show up on the scene and demand acquiescence from every "potential threat". Plus by spending two years away from weapons it should weed out a lot of the cowboys.

Programs could see that police officers attend college to be trained at no cost to themselves as part of the police budget in order to ensure equitable access to the programs. Even if they can't get into the program on first selection, we could also have associates degrees through community colleges for determined minorities to backdoor their way into the four years using a completed associates degree in the same topics.

There are traps we need to look out for so that we don't regress but police should absolutely have the equivalent of a four year degree's worth of training. We should aim for it.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 6:49 AM on May 29, 2020 [36 favorites]


but b/c the life experience from being in college for that timespan – being around people who aren't like you, navigating conflict, etc – matters

I actually agree with this point pretty strongly - not only from personal and personally-observed experience (I actually do a pretty fair amount of work at colleges & universities), but also we've got some at least corollary evidence from the trends in Trump approval polls. Generally speaking, higher education = lower approval, and that's been not only present since the beginning, but trending even more strongly as time has progressed - I'm pretty sure at this point the only group he's got strong (or even majority?) approval in is "non-college-educated white men."

Police should have at least a 4-year college degree.

This one gets some side-eye because of the factor folks actually do address in the replies - namely that civil service jobs are definitely one of the ways minority populations can achieve job security and higher income. And of course minority populations are less likely to be able to attain 4-year college degrees. Doucette does acknowledge this and suggests alternatives like higher pay for officers who complete higher education.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:52 AM on May 29, 2020 [7 favorites]


To help with the four year degree requirement, how about a GI-Bill-type program that would pay up front for the degree in criminal justice or policing or whatever, with a required payback period of service? If you don't complete the service requirement, then you have to pay for your education after the fact. That wouldn't totally eliminate the structural barriers to entry, but it removes a big issue in terms of financial ability.
posted by dellsolace at 6:59 AM on May 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


I don't think a GI Bill helps because it puts undue pressure on people to muddle through or face a huge bill. There's always natural attrition in any police program and this would just disincentivize poorer people from joining in the first place.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:03 AM on May 29, 2020 [6 favorites]


In Rhode Island, fire-fighters can get a two-year (Associates) degree in Fire Science from the state public higher-ed system. And there's both two- and four-year (Bachelor's) programs at the private Providence College, too.

https://www.firescience.org/fire-science-degrees-and-programs/rhode-island/

Most fire-fighters enter the field without a degree, but it's part of climbing the ladder to be a professional, as I understand it.

Personally, I like the idea of expanding training and technical knowledge among people with a job this demanding. And I would be just as glad to see police officers encouraged to get a criminal justice or other degree. Maybe you don't get to carry a firearm without some education (police academy, BA, whatever) beyond your high school diploma.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:13 AM on May 29, 2020 [6 favorites]


Yeah but police officers cannot be trusted to intervene effectively in domestic violence when they are policing their neighbors. You just spent the weekend drinking beer with the guy who punched his wife, the wife isn't going to be able to make a report to you.

There's got to be a combination of community members and total outsiders working in pairs, perhaps. Police should never be predominantly from the community they serve.

I think that there is a wide range between policing one's personal friends and neighbours (which would be a conflict of interest and they should recuse themselves), and having police live in entirely separate cities from the communities they police, as is common in both the U.S. and Canada. The racial dimension is huge - also cultural and class issues. There are good reasons that indigenous communities are increasingly calling for and forming their own police forces, staffed by members of their communities.

Humans, like it or not, are just as subject to forces of homophily: we naturally prefer and have more empathy for people we perceive to be like ourselves. This doesn't always break down on racial lines; I am a white and (now) highly educated Canadian, but I couldn't relate to the 911 victims in 2001 (when I perceived them to be upper-middle-class office workers), but I was devastated during Katrina because the people left behind in New Orleans felt just like me and my family and people I love (i.e. low income and carless). But our world is racist, so homophily often does have a racial component.

When police come from completely different communities, live in different places (often segregated) and different ways from the people they serve, they can't serve them properly - especially if they have been inculcated with the corrosive American-style of policing that treats the people they should be serving as an "enemy".

There are a lot of things that need to be done to improve policing - after all, the fact that Toronto has a Black police chief and many officers who are people of colour and/or LGBT hasn't made for an easy relationship between the police and queer and/or racialized people here. But representation from the community, a sense that the police are part of the community and the people they serve are people like themselves, or their moms or aunties or brothers - this is part of what needs to happen. They need to feel embedded in the communities they serve, and like their purpose is to contribute to the well-being of that community - that is, to protect and serve them, just as they would their own families.

Training is also part of the solution. ACAB aside, police really aren't the same the world over. There are different cultures of policing, some healthier and many unhealthy. The US has a particularly unhealthy police culture - and the Canadian police culture has been getting worse under its influence, largely because we import instructors from the US.
posted by jb at 8:03 AM on May 29, 2020 [13 favorites]


Also, I would fully endorse the Spider-Man principle: with great power comes great responsibility. The very authority that police are allowed means that they have to held to a much higher standard than other professions, not lower. For example, if a donut shop clerk loses it and yells at a customer, that's really not a big deal. But if a police officer does the same, they should be removed from active duty immediately. But too often, it's the other way around.
posted by jb at 8:06 AM on May 29, 2020 [11 favorites]


b/c the life experience from being in college for that timespan – being around people who aren't like you, navigating conflict, etc – matters

If, of course, you attended college in person. If you did the majority (or all) of it from a room in your parents' house, much of the cultural and social aspects of college vanish.

Not that there are a whole lot of 4-year or even 2-year college graduates at this point--but there are going to be more in the future.

However, the mindset required to get through a significant number of college classes online is fairly incompatible with the "respect my authoritay!" approach we'd like to reduce. You can't intimidate a set of checkboxes into giving you a better grade, and a set of thumbs-up emojis when you post the results to the student forum aren't the same as a set of "you'll show those [racial slur] bastards, won't you!" that can happen in RL college social settings.

Online colleges won't reduce xenophobia and prejudice, but they also won't create echo chambers for them to flourish. (...If, of course, the online college spaces are well-managed. That doesn't work if the students are allowed to re-create 4chan on the college forums.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:48 AM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


Watching the live news last night I'm reminded of the 60's; not in a good way.
posted by mule98J at 10:34 AM on May 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


My immediate response to the headline was, "Take over? They're already there." The police force in this country has always been used to enforce white supremacy.

I did rtfa, after that. I agree with it.
posted by corvikate at 10:47 AM on May 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


The four-year degree requirement read to me as a proxy for "get out of the bubble you were raised in and learn to be an adult in society". I'm pro that, and would support a minimum age of 25 (cf. brain development research) to become a police officer. The snag is that too many already come in with prior military experience that skews their mindset to "us v. them" instead of "serve and protect", and a world where you can't enter the police academy till 25 but can enlist as a 17yo high school senior probably wouldn't help.
posted by Flannery Culp at 11:16 AM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


Well this is timely: New Zealand Police Recruitment Ad.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 12:35 PM on May 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


Re: cops not living in their neighbourhoods, is perhaps the bigger problem that they don't have come from those neighbourhoods? Require them to have lived in a place for I dunno two years or something in order to apply to join the local police force. That could help with those cops who bounce between jurisdictions, too.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:04 PM on May 29, 2020 [6 favorites]


Police in Aotearoa are still pretty shit, I don't want to derail too far from US police but if you're not a "top bloke" middle class white guy, there is still a ton of reasons why you don't want to be near them.

That being said, I can only wish for the people of the US, that their problems with the cops were reduced to the magnitude of the problems we have with the cops.

I've been seeing responses to the George Floyd murder, from police force members around the world, get a lot of traction on social media. They have been emphasising just how far outside their normal these cops actions were. I am yet to see the same from a member of a US police force.
posted by fido~depravo at 2:53 PM on May 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


There have definitely been some condemning responses from US police that have gotten some social media & news traction - maybe the most outspoken being the Chattanooga, Tennessee police chief who ended his Tweet with "If you wear a badge and you don't have an issue with this...turn it in." (Meaning if an officer thinks what happened to George Floyd is justifiable, they shouldn't be cops - it's clear in context.) Chattanooga Times Free Press article.

But I do think a lot of the messaging from law enforcement is coming across as more "empty PR" than meaningful statements.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:59 PM on May 29, 2020 [5 favorites]


Thanks for this. I've been passing it around, including on Joe Biden's FB page, not that i think he'll see it. But we have to hope and work at this.
posted by etaoin at 10:29 PM on May 30, 2020


U.S. lawmaker prepares bill aiming to end court protection for police - "U.S. Representative Justin Amash, a conservative independent from Michigan, won support from a Minneapolis Democrat on Monday for his 'Ending Qualified Immunity Act', which would allow civil lawsuits against police, a recourse that the Supreme Court has all but done away with."

-This week, I am introducing the Ending Qualified Immunity Act
-The Supreme Court Has a Chance To End Qualified Immunity and Prevent Cases Like George Floyd's
-Nation's Cops Seem Determined To Demonstrate Why People Are Protesting Them in the First Place

Special Report: For cops who kill, special Supreme Court protection
The Supreme Court’s role is evident in how the federal appeals courts, which take their cue from the high court, treat qualified immunity. In an unprecedented analysis of appellate court records, Reuters found that since 2005, the courts have shown an increasing tendency to grant immunity in excessive force cases – rulings that the district courts below them must follow. The trend has accelerated in recent years. It is even more pronounced in cases like Leija’s – when civilians were unarmed in their encounters with police, and when courts concluded that the facts could convince a jury that police actually did use excessive force.

Reuters found among the cases it analyzed more than three dozen in which qualified immunity protected officers whose actions had been deemed unlawful. Outside of Dallas, Texas, five officers fired 17 shots at a bicyclist who was 100 yards away, killing him, in a case of mistaken identity. In Heber City, Utah, an officer threw to the ground an unarmed man he had pulled over for a cracked windshield, leaving the man with brain damage. In Prince George’s County, Maryland, an officer shot a man in a mental health crisis who was stabbing himself and trying to slit his own throat.

The increasing frequency of such cases has prompted a growing chorus of criticism from lawyers, legal scholars, civil rights groups, politicians and even judges that qualified immunity, as applied, is unjust. Spanning the political spectrum, this broad coalition says the doctrine has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.
more from cato...
-An Unqualified Injustice: Time for Qualified Immunity to Go
-In the Wake of George Floyd's Death, All Eyes Turn to SCOTUS
-As Qualified Immunity Takes Center Stage, More Delay from SCOTUS
-A Quarter Century of Cato Research on Police Accountability
-Longer‐​Run Impacts from Outrageous Policing Incidents: "Poor underlying race relations between the police and community has long‐​term costs, too, an issue that I explored with my colleague Tim Harris in a study published in Journal of Housing Economics in 2018. In the study, we explored whether poor underlying race relations in an area might create a chilling effect on homeownership for minorities."

also btw...
Racism Is the Biggest Reason the U.S. Safety Net Is So Weak - "Harvard economist Alberto Alesina, who died last week, found that ethnic divisions made the country less effective at providing public goods."
posted by kliuless at 3:16 PM on June 1, 2020 [5 favorites]


re: public goods...
US government spending on police, prison & law courts vs. spending on cash (and quasi-cash) welfare, 1970-2018

> I am yet to see the same from a member of a US police force.

-Art Acevedo, Houston Chief of Police "DONT FOLLOW THAT BULLSHIT"
-"In Camden, NJ, protestors took to the streets to peacefully protest racial injustice. When police saw them marching, they made a decision. They decided to join them."
-It's happening in Flint too
-In Some Cities, Police Officers Joined Protesters Marching Against Brutality

> Require them to have lived in a place for I dunno two years or something in order to apply to join the local police force.

-Homicide rates drop as Richmond chief builds bond with community
-Richmond cop makes his home in tough neighborhood
-A Model for Police Reform

also btw...
-Useful data-driven thread from last year on how to reduce police violence
-"Newark, Camden, Trenton & Atlantic City have all had — and continue to have — problems between police and their communities. Yet none of the protests in those cities the last two days turned ugly. One common denominator: Officials & police met with protestors, showed solidarity."
posted by kliuless at 5:19 PM on June 1, 2020 [3 favorites]


an individual four year degree requirement would instantly entrench white and Asian people in the police force as Latino and Black people both lag in acquiring four year degrees c/o systemic racism and the social issues that work towards stopping them from moving upward in social mobility.

I really appreciate everyone who pointed that out -- that's an unintended consequence I hadn't thought of.

Does anyone know if there are organizations that are working to get PoC (and PoC likely to back effective community supportive policing) into and advanced within law enforcement?

This ties in with a maxim attributed to Reagan: "personnel is policy." Lately I've been wondering if conservatives understand that better than progressives on a deep level. Progressives like me might tend to think in terms of systems and it's easy to confuse ideas and ideals with rules. The real rules are *always* encoded in behavior, and there isn't a law written that doesn't run in part on human wetware. Which means no matter how many top-down ideas or ideals there are imposed on the system, those who aren't working to influencing the selection of the human substrate that executes them are ceding part of the field. And if conservatism has near its heart the desire to privilege an ingroup (and bind an outgroup), then those involved with it may have an intuitive grasp of the way that handing the workings of human institutions to your ingroup will serve that goal. See the Federalist Society.

Would love to hear if there are already intentional efforts that are playing the long game to get solid progressive personnel into policing, among other places.
posted by wildblueyonder at 3:01 PM on June 2, 2020


Supreme Court Weighs Qualified Immunity For Police Accused Of Misconduct
Several recent studies, including one conducted by Reuters, have found that dozens of cases involving horrific facts, just as bad as the one involving Floyd, were thrown out of court on the grounds that there was no "clearly established" court precedent forbidding the conduct at issue...

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, arguably the court's most liberal justice, has repeatedly dissented when her colleagues have excused police misconduct in police brutality cases. In one dissent, she said the court "displays an unflinching willingness" to reverse lower courts when they refuse to grant qualified immunity to police officers. In contrast, she said, the court "rarely intervenes" when lower courts wrongly grant qualified immunity to police officers. This "one-sided approach" transforms qualified immunity into "an absolute shield for law enforcement officers," she wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's most conservative member, has also called for revisiting the doctrine of qualified immunity. He has written that the doctrine was simply invented by judges without any historical basis.

Similar unusual alliances have been formed by organizations that file briefs regularly at the court — from the conservative/libertarian Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice to the liberal ACLU and the NAACP.

The legal battle over qualified immunity may now have reached an inflection point in the aftermath of Floyd's death in Minneapolis.

There are currently eight qualified immunity cases now pending before the Supreme Court. The facts of the cases are varied. They range from the shooting of a 10-year-old boy when police pursued an unarmed suspect into a yard where children were playing, to the apparently needless destruction of a house with tear gas grenades when police were given the house keys to look for a suspect after the homeowner had told police the suspect was not there, to other cases involving deaths and profound injuries stemming from police misconduct.

It takes the votes of four of the nine justices to agree to hear a case. The question is whether there are four who think there is the possibility of a fifth vote for limiting or abolishing qualified immunity as it now exists.
-'Qualified Immunity': A Doctrine That Made It Much Harder To Sue The Police
-America's Criminal Justice System Is Rotten to the Core
-Police Spending Soars at the Federal Level

also btw...
5'7" Black Male: "White people have been treated like Black people by the police for a WEEK and suddenly every state is pondering defunding cops. This is what it takes every damn time." (pretty much: America's Citizens Will Not Be Silenced By Government Intimidation)
posted by kliuless at 4:56 PM on June 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


U.S. Supreme Court rejects cases over 'qualified immunity' for police - "Democrats and Republicans in Washington have been pulling together their own versions of police reform legislation. A Democratic plan unveiled in the House would roll back qualified immunity for law enforcement officers. Some Republican lawmakers have come out against abolishing qualified immunity, and the White House has signaled its opposition... Amid the mounting criticism of qualified immunity, the justices had signaled an interest in potentially revisiting the issue by letting multiple appeals seeking to roll back the doctrine pile up."

The Supreme Court's Dereliction of Duty on Qualified Immunity
This morning, the Supreme Court denied all of the major cert petitions raising the question of whether qualified immunity should be reconsidered. This is, to put it bluntly, a shocking dereliction of duty. As Cato has argued for years, qualified immunity is an atextual, ahistorical judicial invention, which shields public officials from liability, even when they break the law. The doctrine not only denies justice to victims whose rights have been violated, but also exacerbates our crisis of confidence in law enforcement. By holding police officers to a far lower standard of accountability than ordinary citizens, qualified immunity deprives the entire law enforcement community of the public trust and credibility they need to do their jobs safely and effectively...

Justice Thomas was the only member of the Court who would have granted any of the petitions. He dissented in the Baxter case, writing that “[b]ecause our § 1983 qualified immunity doctrine appears to stray from the statutory text, I would grant this petition.” It’s especially disappointing that Justice Gorsuch didn’t join this dissent, as he has otherwise demonstrated himself to be a principled advocate of textualism and originalism, and also willing to reconsider misguided precedent. And it’s surprising that Justice Sotomayor had nothing to say regarding these cases, given her previous comments in a dissent (joined by Justice Ginsburg) noting that qualified immunity had become an “absolute shield for law enforcement officers” that has “gutt[ed] the deterrent effect of the Fourth Amendment.” Perhaps one or more of these Justices will agree to hear some future case. But for now, Justice Thomas stands alone...

It’s impossible to know for sure what motivated the Court to deny all of these petitions. But one possibility is that the Justices were looking closely at developments in Congress—where members of both the House and the Senate have introduced bills that would abolish qualified immunity—and decided to duck the question, hoping to pressure Congress to fix the Court’s mess. It is certainly encouraging that so many legislators have finally turned their attention to qualified immunity. But the mere fact that Congress can fix this mess doesn’t absolve the Supreme Court of its obligation to fix what it broke—the Court conjured qualified immunity out of nothing in the first place, and the Justices had both the authority and responsibility to correct their own blunders, no matter what happens in the legislature.

Qualified immunity will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s most egregious, costly, and embarrassing mistakes. None of the Justices on the Court today were responsible for creating this doctrine, but they all had a responsibility to fix it—and except for Justice Thomas, they all shirked that responsibility. It is now all the more urgent that Congress move forward on this issue and ensure that all public officials—especially members of law enforcement—are held accountable for their misconduct.
also btw...
When you imagine a world without the drug war, the mind spins with possibilities, especially for policing. Imagine all those resources are poured into treatment and recovery. Imagine all those police officers who are reassigned to the homicide, burglary, and sex crimes divisions. The American murder clearance rate—the rate at which someone is arrested for a murder—sits around 60 percent, which is among the lowest in the developed world. Other crimes with real victims—assault, rape, burglary—have even lower clearance rates. Even if the drug war were ended, there’s clearly a lot of policing to be done.

Imagine a world where SWAT raids are used when they’re needed rather than the 62 percent of the time they’re currently used to serve drug warrants. Imagine waking up in a world where the police have dedicated almost all their resources to preventing actual crimes and catching actual criminals.

That world is possible. We can get Officer Friendly back, and I’d gladly sit next to that guy at the lunch counter.
posted by kliuless at 1:19 PM on June 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


Parody of Norman Rockwell's "The Runaway" by Richard Williams, circa 2015.

@ava: "This is a white woman talking honestly about her experiences and its one of the best threads on the criminalization of Black people that I've read lately."
When I was 15, I was chased through a mall by police who were yelling “Stop thief!” I had thousands of dollars of stolen merchandise on me. I was caught, booked, sentenced to 6 months of probation, required to see a parole officer weekly. I was never even handcuffed.

THREAD:
@AyannaPressley: "The defund movement isn't new. Folks are just finally listening. 'We got money for wars but can't feed the poor.'"

@AOC: "Teachers are paying out of pocket for school supplies, yet police are given extra tanks. Budgets convey priorities. We should question ours."

@SenWarren: "Instead of addressing the public health & economic crisis or the systemic racism in our policing system, Mitch McConnell is using the Senate floor to ram through the nomination of his 38-year-old protégé Justin Walker to a lifetime appointment on the DC Circuit."

@Booker4KY: "I have a plan for that."[1,2,3]
posted by kliuless at 11:42 PM on June 16, 2020 [2 favorites]


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