In a sane country, you'd be able to sue cops who violate your rights. A local legislature in NY wants to make sure that cops can sue you—potentially violating your rights in the process.
Nassau County legislators passed a bill allowing cops to sue people for a list of things, including "harassment," which would merit damages & an additional penalty of up to $50,000.
This isn't the first bill of its kind. Just last week, I wrote about a FL bill that would criminalize "indirect harassment" against cops if someone gets closer than 30 feet—effectively making it illegal to film them.
Common objection: "But cops have hard jobs!" Yes, & anyone worried can take comfort in the fact that assaulting a cop is already illegal.
@Popehat breaks down the absurdity: "This is really trying to deter speech against cops that might hurt the most delicate person's feelings."
The hypocrisy is hard to ignore. Republicans typically abhor hate crime provisions. Yet they are sometimes willing to cast that aside, as long as it pertains to police.
In 2020, the Alabama House voted to make cops a protected class. Wrote about it here: reason.com/2019/12/18/ala…
The ironic part: Thanks to qualified immunity, it is *extremely* hard for people to sue cops when police violate their rights.
Qualified immunity has protected cops who shot kids, who beat people absent just cause, who stole hundreds of thousands of $$$. reason.com/2021/08/03/nas…
Yet Nassau County legislators have voted to make it easier...for cops to sue you. In many instances, those suits would come not because you violated their rights, but because you exercised *your* rights. And the cost for that should be zero. /end reason.com/2021/08/03/nas…
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This is an absolute horror story. These 3 Missouri men are serving life sentences for separate crimes that the government concedes they *did not commit*.
This bill would let cops sue protesters for *harassment*. And yet these same people say the public shouldn’t be able to sue cops who steal, destroy property, shoot children, & set people on fire. See the problem?
This is a wild story & a crash course in the powers police can so easily abuse: from the drug war, to surveillance, to botched warrants, to no-knock raids.
Texas cops raided the wrong home. They kept searching anyway.
Police got a warrant to raid Lucil Basco's home for drugs based on a confidential informant who told them the residence had meth.
She did not, in fact, have meth, but the police failed to do a basic investigation. reason.com/2021/07/30/qua…
They *did* surveil her thoroughly, however.
Officers conducted a traffic stop where "they searched her vehicle and learned that she is a nurse." And they watched her home where she lives with her small child. reason.com/2021/07/30/qua…
Gabriel Olivas was having a mental health crisis when police came to help. They knew he was doused in gas—and one warned that tasing him would set him on fire.
The other cops did it anyway. He was burned alive, & his family’s home burned along with him. reason.com/2021/06/28/qua…
Here’s where it gets rich. The 5th Circuit said the officers didn’t violate Olivas’ rights—when they set him & the home ablaze—because he posed a threat.
But the fire that endangered others was set in motion *because* of the cops…not in spite of them. reason.com/2021/06/28/qua…
An autopsy ruled it homicide by asphyxiation. The court was tasked with deciding whether or not it was "clearly established" that cops cannot apply such extreme force to a subject who isn't resisting.
Is there anything more ridiculous than qualified immunity?
What's most amazing is that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the original ruling.
This is the same court that gave qualified immunity to prison guards who locked a naked inmate in cells covered in human feces & raw sewage. reason.com/2020/06/25/qua…
Here's a doozy: A group of cops knowingly violated the First Amendment when they tried to force a man to delete a video of them beating a suspect, a federal court said this week.
That same court gave them qualified immunity anyway.
The story: A man named Levi Frasier sees a group of cops making an arrest in an alleged drug deal, & he films them punching the suspect 6 times in the face.
The cops find Frasier afterward, surround him, search his tablet without a warrant, & try to delete the video.
The kicker: The cops had *specific training* on this issue. The public has the right to film an arrest, and the cops knew it. The city had explicitly told them so.
The 10th Circuit acknowledged this & agreed it was a free speech violation.