Riots in Minneapolis

Has Lee Hayes been cancelled yet?

 

How interesting - Major cities ‘refund the police’ as crime skyrockets and businesses backfire (yahoo.com). Maybe - just maybe - the voice of reason from concerned citizens will be heard.

 

They do everything for votes. They thought defunding would get votes. Now, they are seeing the insanity in that thinking, so they will reverse it.

 

Once a criminal, always a criminal.

 

Hic, you're (unfortunately) correct. We can only hope that the voters will see through them and toss them out - along with their innate liberalism.

 

Nobody was charged. I have no idea why he stopped.

 

The judge with a straight face says there was no juror misconduct.
Chauvin won't be getting a new trial.

Derek Chauvin sentencing: Former police officer faces prison time for the murder of George Floyd

 

We said this was coming. Like I said, you couldn't pay me enough to be a cop. This is only the start. Thank God for Abbott signing the constitutional carry bill. This is only the beginning.

Cops Across US Are Resigning, Retiring Like Crazy - Comments (newser.com)

 

Common sense is not welcome when it comes to politics. The amazing thing is how many people believe in politicians. The only thing you can believe is if you have enough power to influence or embarrass a politician then maybe you can believe in their response to save their own political hide.

 

Retirements and resignations are way up among cops. Interesting to see what happens after this sentence

or if they pass the Dems law unenforcement bill

if they shed qualified immunity there will be a rush both for the doors and the donut shops

 

There should be no qualified immunity. But police shouldn't be demonized either. There should be clear guidelines that we all understand. When those guidelines are crossed and a person dies, they should be thrown in jail. They aren't the law and they aren't above the law. Allowing police to abuse their power is the problem. They shouldn't cry if they do wrong and get held accountable.

It is amazing how much police corruption and abuse gets swept under the rug and how guilty policemen get shielded from justice. If you don't allow them to come to justice, you are asking for huge societal problems. Training. Clear lines not to cross. No qualified immunity. No civil asset forfeiture. Reducing the number of laws to enforce. They should all be on the table. If not you are just protecting felons within police departments.

 

While we are at it, let's drop all personal immunity for all elected representatives when laws are passed that damage others.

 

I'm for that too. Government officials need to held to very high levels and punished severely if they lead to less justice, less freedom, higher taxes.

 

For every complex problem there is a simple solution like yours and it is always wrong

getting rid of immunity would be great for plaintiff lawyers

immunity is a solution to a set of complex problems. Not perfect, but a solution. The replacement would make a jury question out of every exercise of discretion that anybody disagreed with. And it would encourage scummy criminals like St George to resist arrest

 

Getting rid of qualified immunity means that every police officer's house, bank account, college savings fund, and loose change in the desk drawer is at risk every time they make an arrest. With predictable results - no one with any talent, ability, wife / husband earning a decent salary, would even think about going into that career.

You'd been foolish to - make an arrest that 12 other people didn't agree with, and you lose everything you've every worked for.

So, who would fill those cop spot? People with nothing to lose, and no ability to make a living elsewhere. Does not sound like a decent plan.

 

No, it wouldn't. Two reasons why not. First, they'll have liability insurance. Second, in all the years I represented plaintiffs, I never tried to get cash from an employee. I sued employees routinely, but it was always for legal reasons (such as to keep my case from getting removed to federal court), not to get money from them. I would name them as defendants, invoke the respondeat superior doctrine (which makes employers responsible for the negligent acts of their employees while in the course and scope of their employment) and pursue money from the employer or its insurer. Plaintiffs lawyers don't want to go chase pennies from judgment-proof individuals. It's a pain in the ***.

 

Yeah, but you were trying to get money for your clients. The goal for the seemingly bottomless pit of the leftist legal complex would be to alter police behavior, via personal lawsuits. Won't matter to them if they get a dime - they're not in it for the money, it's to bully police into not policing.

And with the current business PC climate, it would take about 3 *** holes on twitter to post on any insurance companies Twitter feed about how they support police brutality via providing insurance, and those outfits would no longer offer police liability coverage.

 

First, no insurance company is going to insure police brutality. There is no insurance that would protect an individual officer's bank account. Would the employing entity still hold harmless it's officers if this moronic idea came to fruition? Not sure.
Second, as was stated, take away legal protections for individual officers and they quit. We are then on the verge of old west justice, so go to the range and practice your quick draw.

 

I'm not sure why they wouldn't. They insure for people accused of worse - bouncers accused of basically doing the same thing, people accused of sexual assault and child molestation. For example, my dad teaches violin. If one of his students accuses him of anything sexual, he's covered.

Almost for sure, yes.

Don't get me wrong. I would be open to tinkering at the edges of qualified immunity. I would not dump it altogether like Monahorns would.

 

A violin teacher and a bouncer do not carry pistols, tasers, rifles, road spikes, and shotguns and have to deal mostly with azzholes like GeorgeFloyd everyday. The bouncer occasionally runs into a dumbazz that has had too much loud mouth soup.

That would almost defeat the purpose of changing the law, so why even make a change unless that aspect were also changed?

 

I'm sorry the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that this doesn't make sense. You can't hold policemen accountable for misconduct anymore. If you don't move on this, the push back will get harder and harder.

 

Deez. I am actually open to options. Maybe it could be reformed and still exist. My only desire to for policemen to be held accountable when they clearly commit injustice. There are many examples I have seen where they are protected way beyond anything reasonable.

 

I may be wrong, but didn't we just have a policeman convicted?

 

One. That's it. Nothing else to see here. Move along, move along.

 

Many many more than one

 

Teachers don't have guns, but they sometimes have dicks that can cause pretty extensive liability exposure. They may not kill, but they do serious damage and against far more sympathetic plaintiffs.

Think about it. Is a jury more likely to throw money at some cute, innocent-looking 15-year-old girl sobbing on the stand about some perverted adult man who slimed his way into her pants (and who is in a position to do it to their daughters) or some thug who got his *** kicked for fighting a cop? The media made Floyd into a sympathetic figure, but that's not gonna happen for many.

Bouncers and security guards are covered, and they pretty regularly get physical, and security guards sometimes carry guns.

Again, I'm not calling for getting rid of qualified immunity. I'm just saying that I think an insurance arrangement of some sort would cover them. It might be a TML Risk Pool-type of entity, but it would be somebody. I don't think you'd have lawyers rummaging through the cops' personal finances looking for the needle in the haystack that isn't judgment proof - too much trouble with virtually no chance of reward. Keep in mind that cops are already covered for the situations in which they can be sued.

The purpose of making the change is to broaden the scope of police brutality cases that are viable for litigation. Keep in mind that qualified immunity protects the individual officer, not the police agency.

I think that the departments would indemnify and/or provide insurance of some kind for the reason you all have raised. If they didn't, then nobody would be willing to be a cop.

 

A couple of points for both of you to consider. First, qualified immunity has no bearing on criminal cases, and keeping it or dumping it doesn't make a difference for those who are charged criminally.

Second, I can understand why criminal charges aren't an adequate remedy. They have to be brought by DAs who are largely sympathetic to and have a professional and often personal connection with cops. I wouldn't call it a blatant conflict of interest, but they work together all the time. They're buddies. (Without the politically charged media attention, does anyone think Chauvin would have been charged? No chance in hell.) Furthermore, criminal cases aren't about compensating the victim. Civil lawsuits get around both problems, so they have their place.

Third, I think Monahorns overstates how broad qualified immunity is. It's not an absolute shield to liability, hence the term "qualified." In a nutshell, it protects the cop in situations in which he doesn't clearly violate someone's statutory or constitutional rights. It keeps every move he makes from becoming a jury question. It's not impossible to sue a cop who truly acts egregiously. I'm not saying you won't find any cases in which bad apples have won on the QI defense. You will, and I'd be ok with some changes, but plenty of bad cops have faced liability. And if you dump it altogether, cops will be in court a lot more than is good for the public. Even if I think iatrogenic gets a few minor things less than perfectly right on this, his overall point is correct.

I'm friends with Adam Loewy. I assume he'd like to see qualified immunity dumped, but he makes a decent living with police litigation a key part of his practice. It's possible to sue the worst offenders. (You'd also think he was a radical leftist and an overall cop-hater considering what he does, but he actually isn't. He has been vocal about the rising crime and opposed the idiotic homeless camping crap. By Austin standards, I'd call him a conservative.)

 

Saw this on Facebook and chuckled.

 

I think that’s SH’s high school picture.

 

That is what I’m saying; nobody would want to be a cop without coverage for personal liability, and it’s not going to come from insurance.
Yes, the occasional sexual misconduct claim is probably more likely to be punished by a jury, and I’m 100% for horrendous punishment for such acts. You seem to be overlooking frequency and magnitude of potential claims. Insurers avoid companies with frequent claims issues. An occasional catastrophic claim is not frowned upon the same way as are frequency issues. Cops with weapons run to bad situations in order to stop those situations using force if necessary, and they do so hundreds of times everyday. Those actions create a frequency issue. I never saw a bouncer with a gun, and they are stationed at one establishment, not speeding all over town looking for trouble. Not sure why you added security guards to the mix but they are similar to bouncers in that trouble comes to them, not the other way around.
To be fair, you could insure cops just as you could buy fire insurance on a burning building. You may not want to after seeing how much the premium will be.