Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
It is indeed rare, if not unprecedented, to see a highly diverse group of organizations such as the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, the liberal American Civil Liberties Union, the libertarian Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation on the same page as the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund on the same issue.
But it is happening as the U.S. Senate takes up police reform. The issue is a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity.
These diverse organizations all agree that qualified immunity is bad law and should end.
The discussion is particularly high-powered today because it stands at the center of police reform that many see is needed in the wake of incidents such as the murder of George Floyd by former police officer Derek Chauvin.
The nation’s first major civil rights law, the Civil Rights Act of 1871, passed shortly after the Civil War, contains a provision known as Section 1983 that protects citizens from violation of their civil rights by government officials. It says that a government official who violates a citizen’s civil rights is liable and can be sued by the injured party.
Thus stood the law, until a series of Supreme Court decisions from 1967 to 1982 reinterpreted its application.
A new standard, qualified immunity, was added saying that it must be shown that rights were violated per “clearly established law.” That is, there must be a previous case in which rights were violated the exact same way.
So, if a citizen’s rights are violated but there is no previous case in which rights were violated in exactly that way, there is no protection. The government official is immune from liability.
Although the law applies to violation of a citizen’s civil rights by any government official, the hot button today is violations by police.
The qualified immunity doctrine makes establishing liability next to impossible, thus removing a serious deterrent against police violating civil rights in their law enforcement activities.
Police leadership and unions argue that qualified immunity is essential for them to do their job. This is a tough and dangerous business, they say, and split-second law enforcement decisions must be made, often under great uncertainty, sometimes with life-and-death implications.
But police officers being able to make deadly decisions, with no sense of personal responsibility and costs, leads to some of the horrors that we are seeing today.
Derek Chauvin had 18 complaints against him before he committed his final deadly act against George Floyd. Had the incident, in all its gory and tragic details, not been captured on video by a young onlooker, the legal outcome likely would have been much different.
Personal responsibility must be the hallmark in a free country, whether we’re talking about obeying the law or enforcing it. When right and wrong become ambiguous, when personal responsibility becomes ambiguous, we see the chaos we are witnessing today.
Police officers perform a vital function in our society. But what does law enforcement mean when law has no meaning? And law has no meaning if officers have free license to violate citizens’ civil rights.
A creative solution has been proposed by the Cato Institute: Require police officers to carry liability insurance, like other professionals do. This would provide them the coverage they need. And those who are flagrant violators, like Derek Chauvin, would be priced out of the market.
The only stalwart on the Supreme Court questioning the status quo on qualified immunity has been Clarence Thomas.
Thomas is an originalist — read the law as written — and opposed to judicial activism. He has written that qualified immunity is “the sort of ‘freewheeling policy choice(s)’ that we have previously disclaimed the power to make.”
Thomas has urged the court to take on and review this issue. “I continue to have strong doubts about our … qualified immunity doctrine,” he wrote last year.
Policing should be a local issue, not a national one. But civil rights is a national issue, and qualified immunity should be reformed.
COPYRIGHT 2021 STAR PARKER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Photo credit: Elvert Barnes (Creative Commons) – Some rights reserved
Star Parker is the founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and author of “Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why This is Good News for America.” She hosts a weekly show called “Cure America with Star Parker.”
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Have to disagree with you for the first time Star. NO insurance company in its right mind would provide liability insurance to police officers. If they did, the officer or even if the city paid for it, would never be able to afford it. As it is, the compensation they are paid, is RIDICULOUS for the risks they take. 103+ cops have been killed in the line of duty this year. NO ONE talks about those tragic losses. NO ONE on the left focuses on this. The focus instead falls on career criminals resisting arrest. NOT excusing Chauvin. But 10 million arrests are made in this country each year. Cases like George Floyd’s are indeed tragic, BUT where do our priorities lay, when young black men AND CHILDREN are being murdered DAILY in our cities. WHY IS NO ONE PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS ON THE LEFT? Outside of yourself and a growing number of voices, the left just ignores it. WHY aren’t these murders being protested by BLM and Antifa? By Democrats? By sports and Hollywood stars? By the elites? We will NOT have law enforcement soon. Only people that have private security (actually off duty cops) ala Lebron, Zuck, Gates, will have any protection. All of the organizations you have listed above, are NOT addressing the issue of black on black non police murders and crimes, let alone Planned Parenthood exterminating the black community (& others) DAILY, to the tune of a million babies a year. You are doing GREAT work. I pray that you do NOT align with this War on Cops. If so, then I will sadly stop my support. You cannot focus on these minute percentages of incidents, when all around us is blowing up. Black persons in the cities, are the ones bearing the brunt of the War on Cops. They are the victims of this woke misplaced direction. PS Even workman’s compensation coverage is self funded by police and fire departments. There again, insurance companies will not touch that with a ten foot pole. Just too much risk in those professions of cops and firefighters getting hurt on the job. This is NOT a viable idea.
PS The ACLU is just is remnant of what it use to be. It will not even lift its voice against big tech censorship. They have fallen into “we will only defend people who think the way we think they should” mode. Which is hard left. THEIR SILENCE IS DEAFENING!
Please there are so many jokes I can tell about the A.C.L.U. that it would take all week!