Thread by @finchymonger

Qualified Immunity—Is It Really That Bad? YES.

A Thread for all the people thinking that qualified immunity can’t REALLY let cops get away with just about anything.

Let’s look at the West V. City of Caldwell Case

Short version of events: officers surround a home after a 911 call that a violent suspect was inside and holding the plaintiff (P) hostage. When officers arrive, P is actually walking down the street and says suspect isn’t there.

Officer (O) tells P she will “get in trouble” if she is harboring the suspect. She says he might be in there. O asks permission to enter and apprehend the suspect. P nods, gives him a key, and leaves. O calls in a SWAT teams and uses shotguns to shoot teargas into the house.

The suspect is not inside. The house is uninhabitable for months due to the damage done by the teargas. The police offer $900 for the damage of property. P sues for unreasonable search, unreasonable seizure, and conversion.

For the volentariness of consent, qualified immunity was granted because of discrepancies between prior cases and the current one including:
1. This case was about arresting a felon, the other about a welfare check.

2. Officer in this case spoke to P away from the house, and in the other case the officer spoke to the plaintiff at the front door.
3. The officer did not threaten entry, detainment, or arrest like the officers in previous cases.

For the Scope of Consent they dismissed clear precedent for the following discrepancies:
1. The references case is about the search of a car, and this the search of a house.
2. The other case is a 5th Circuit case and therefor not applicable

For the Reasonableness of Search and Seizure the court dismissed precedent on these grounds:
1. One case documents officers enter the wrong house, in this case they enter the correct house
2. One case officers express destroying stuff was “cool” but these officers didn’t

3. One case covers a nighttime police raid but this case was during the day

So the plaintiff lost the case.

NOT because the court didn’t believe she was coerced, or that the officers’ actions exceeded her consent, or that their actions were unreasonable but only because “those rights were not clearly established at the appropriate levels of specificity in August 2014.”

Under Qualified Immunity, it doesn’t matter what the intent of the officer was (per Supreme Court decision in 1982 Harlow v. Fitzgerald) or what the actual legality of the situation was. It only matters if it precisely matches a previous case.

#EndQualifiedImmunity

Sitting versus laying down can cause qualified immunity to be applied.

Peppery spray versus being tazed can cause qualified immunity to be applied.

Talking in your yard versus at the front door can cause qualified immunity to be applied.

This law makes officer guilt, intent, and culpability irrelevant thus hamstringing any hope of holding officers responsible for damage done.

#EndQualifiedImmunity