This is a move in Congress today to eliminate "Qualified Immunity" for law enforcement. Qualified Immunity is the legal concept that police are generally exempt from laws while enforcing the law. While "Back the Blue" is generally good, there is a side to this matter that the pro-LE side needs to consider: Police can be assholes. The problem involves things like a police officer shooting your dog because he THINKS the dog MIGHT end up threatening him SOMEHOW. Because "the right to keep and handle dogs" is not clearly established in constitutional jurisprudence, the best the dog owner can do is maybe collect financial recompense from the department. The trigger-happy bum with a badge MIGHT get SOME sort of reprimand about SOMETHING. But no charges will ever be filed. (As I told a police officer friend recently: "This is why even White people hate police.")
It's been recognized that virtually every encounter a civilian has with a police officer involves some statutory violation by the officer. Be it a threat by placing his hand on his weapon in a threatening manner or whatever or full-on felony battery, the officer proceeds as if immune from prosecution for anything, because that is how he was trained. It enables him to act confidently while intimidating people into compliance. (Indeed, a California police chief testified before Congress that such intimidation, not protection, is the reason for police being armed.) Police do not know the law; they know POLICY (per the late Jack McLamb).
The solution is simple: Common sense. It's one thing to miss a point on Probable Cause when stopping a terrorist attack, but another to shoot a man's dog and leave him to die slowly because the pooch barked. So we look the other way at the former and do some judicially-sanctioned eye-for-eye on the latter. But since with "civil rights" we have to deny certain realities, and government departments have to go out of their way to not appear "racist" by modern standards--"modern standards" being the need to HIDE demographic realities--we can't do use common sense. The terrorist has the same protections as the dog owner--and MORE protections if the terrorist has darker skin than most of us. Such is White Guilt today.
A lawyer explained the "exclusionary rule" about evidence in a manner that fits "qualified immunity": Because "we" want police to be able to do basically whatever they need to do to keep us safe, we exempt them from prosecution, but make up for that by excluding the evidence from trial. For example, to use that terror attack scenario: Achmed from Afghanistan is planning to blow up a building. Officer Friendly is by any common-sense measure convinced of this. So he pops open Achmed's trunk and finds the explosives, plans, wires, etc. Yay! The terror plot is stopped.
BUT, to make up for the camelfucker's supposed rights being violated, all that evidence is tainted. Achmed walks and is a free man with all the rights of such. Of course, he'll be monitored, but ultimately, he's free to launch further attacks, including the one that kills the wife of Officer Friendly.
So, since objective standards always go against the darker-skinned peoples (Russert's "Rule of Three" here--please click to read), we've ended up with two consequences:
1. Police have to abuse White people who don't deserve it just to establish parity with their abuse of others who DO deserve and require it.
2. Implementation of Qualified Immunity: Let authorities be as abusive as they wish, let the guilty go free, and let the good people suffer.
All because of White Guilt.
Understand, folks, "qualified immunity" sounds good, and some sort of protection for law enforcement in this regard is certainly necessary in this age of unrealistic "civil rights." That said, this current system has a severe flaw. The ultimate answer is to eliminate "civil rights" and apply and enforce simple "equal protection" with an eye toward demographic realities. Then police will be able to do their jobs even as we as a society police them.
But until that can be done, a word for police: Stop being assholes. It'll get you greater political support among the good people--and you all know who I mean by that.
1. Accept 2A and RKBA for civilians. Just accept it, even when "policy" says you're supposed to violate people's rights.
2. Act secretly in ways that uphold the good guys. You KNOW what you can do.
3. Stop shooting people's animals because you think it's fun to pull a trigger.
Do your best.
