![]() Michelman recently represented a homeless Black man whose claim that cops used excessive force when they set a police dog on him after he surrendered was thrown out based on qualified immunity. “If there was accountability, that might act as a significant check on police behavior. In effect, they say, qualified immunity denies Black people the recourse to justice provided by the 1871 law and enables violent police behavior that has a disproportionate impact on them.Ĭivil rights laws are meant “to protect Black people specifically or just people who are marginalized more generally, so the burden of qualified immunity will fall more heavily on those groups,” said Scott Michelman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C. In the view of critics across the political spectrum, it has evolved into a powerful defense that shields police from being held accountable for excessive force. Supreme Court half a century ago, qualified immunity was meant to protect officials from costly and frequent litigation. GALVANIZED: The death of George Floyd under a cop’s knee in May sparked mass demonstrations like this one in Minneapolis to demand reforms aimed at reducing police violence, including ending qualified immunity. Yet judges tossed out all three claims - before any jury had a chance to review the evidence - because the police involved were protected by a once-obscure legal doctrine that has become a flashpoint in this year of racial unrest: qualified immunity. ![]() The lawsuits they filed were made possible under an act of Congress passed 150 years ago for the purpose of protecting Black Americans from abuses by state and local authorities in the post-Civil War years. She and the others sued the police, accusing them of excessive force, a civil rights violation. As Stewart’s mother, Mary, put it: “Luke wasn’t doing anything illegal, and now he’s dead … It was racism. The men didn’t comply, they said, because they had no idea why police engaged with them in the first place, and as Black men, they were justifiably frustrated or afraid or both. Local prosecutors brought no charges against them.īut Stewart’s family, Dobbins and Howse all felt wronged and hoped to hold the police accountable. The officers – all of them white – were cleared of wrongdoing by their departments. The officers who killed Stewart and roughed up Dobbins and Howse said the force they used was appropriate because the men ran, resisted or otherwise didn’t follow orders. The aftermath of each of the three incidents examined for this article followed a common pattern. They also are more likely to be killed by police. ![]() They are more likely to be stopped, searched and arrested than their white compatriots. ![]() Encounters like these, occurring across the United States, inform persistent complaints that racial bias poisons policing in the country - complaints that coalesced into a mass movement for policing reform after the May 25 death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis cop.Ī growing body of research supports the perception that police unfairly target Black Americans. ![]()
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