How the Supreme Court Lets Cops Get Away With Murder
"Former Minneapolis police officer found guilty in Justine Ruszczyk's death"
The courts protected police abuses for years before George Floyd’s death. It’s time to rethink “qualified immunity.”
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
May 29, 2020
A portrait of George Floyd on a lamppost outside the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct station on Wednesday. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
A Minneapolis police officer, who was filmed kneeling .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/us/george-floyd-minneapolis-death.html .. on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes until the life left his body, has been fired, arrested and charged .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/george-floyd-minneapolis-protests.html .. with third-degree murder and manslaughter. That is a step toward justice. Those who take a life should face a jury of their peers. But the rarity of the arrest, the fact that police officers who brutalize or even kill other people while wearing a badge so seldom end up facing any consequences is an ugly reminder of how unjust America’s legal system can be.
There is a common refrain from street protesters in the wake of death .. [some outed from each here]
"When Will the Killing Stop? By The Editorial Board July 7, 2016 [...] P - Of the two videos, the first showed Alton Sterling on Tuesday pinned to the ground outside a store in Baton Rouge, La., when he was shot in the chest and back at close range by police officers. P - The second showed the death of Philando Castile, who was stopped for an alleged traffic infraction in a St. Paul suburb and was shot several times by a police officer." https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/opinion/when-will-the-killing-stop.html
after death ..
"The Violent Legacy of Chicago’s Police By The Editorial Board April 21, 2015 Rahm Emanuel inherited a Police Department with a history of serious misconduct when he became mayor of Chicago four years ago. Mr. Emanuel tried to break with the past on Wednesday when he co-sponsored a proposal in City Council that would provide reparations to scores of people who were systematically tortured by the police during the 1970s and ’80s under the infamous police commander Jon Burge. P - On the same day, in a separate case that is still fresh in the public’s mind, the Council awarded $5 million to the family of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager who was shot 16 times by a police officer in October." https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/opinion/the-violent-legacy-of-chicagos-police.html
after death ..
"The Walter Scott Murder By The Editorial Board April 8, 2015 A protest in North Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday. A protest in North Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday.Credit...Chuck Burton/Associated Press P - The horrifying video of a white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., shooting and killing an unarmed black man — while the man is running away — may still come as a shock to many Americans. But this heinous act, which the officer tried to explain away by claiming that he feared for his life, strikes a familiar chord in communities of color all across the United States. P - The case underscores two problems that have become increasingly clear since the civic discord that erupted last year after the police killed black citizens in New York, Cleveland and Ferguson, Mo. The first, most pressing problem is that poorly trained and poorly supervised officers often use deadly force unnecessarily, particularly against minority citizens. The second is that the police get away with unjustly maiming or killing people by lying about the circumstances that prompted them to use force. P - The shooting death of Walter Scott on Saturday would have passed into the annals of history unremarked upon had a bystander not used a cellphone to document what happened after Mr. Scott encountered the police officer, Michael Slager, after a routine traffic stop. P - Mr. Slager subsequently reported by radio that he had shot Mr. Scott after Mr. Scott wrestled away his electronic stun gun. The video, provided to The New York Times by the Scott family’s lawyer, shows a different story." https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/opinion/the-walter-scott-murder.html
after death ..
"The Problem Is Bigger Than Ferguson By The Editorial Board March 12, 2015 [...] The Justice Department’s exposé of the bigoted law enforcement practices at play in Ferguson, Mo., has rightly led to an exodus of officials from the town government. In the week since the report was made public, the police chief, the city manager and the municipal court judge have all stepped down, and the city’s court has been placed under state supervision." https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/opinion/the-problem-is-bigger-than-ferguson.html
of men of color at the hands of the police: “No justice, no peace.” In the absence of justice, there has been no peace.
In 1967, the same year the police chief of Miami coined the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/politics/trump-looting-shooting.html ” to threaten civil rights demonstrators, the Supreme Court first articulated a notion of “qualified immunity.” In the case of police violence against a group of civil rights demonstrators in Mississippi, the court decided that police officers should not face legal liability for enforcing the law “in good faith and with probable cause .. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/386/547/ .”
That’s a high standard to meet. But what makes these cases nearly impossible for plaintiffs to win is the court’s requirement that any violation of rights be “clearly established” — that is, another court must have previously encountered a case with the same context and facts, and found there that the officer was not immune. This is a judge-made rule; the civil rights law itself says nothing about a “clearly established” requirement. Yet in practice it has meant that police officers prevail virtually every time, because it’s very hard to find cases that are the same in all respects.It also creates a Catch-22 for plaintiffs, who are required to hunt down precedents in courts that have stopped generating those precedents, because the plaintiffs always lose. As one conservative judge put it in a U.S. district court in Texas, “Heads defendants win, tails plaintiffs lose.”
The vast majority of police officers are decent, honest men and women who do some of society’s most dangerous work. They should be forgiven good-faith mistakes or errors in judgment. But in case after case, well documented now by body cameras and bystanders, too many bad cops go unpunished for policing their fellow citizens in ways that often leave them abused or dead. No official tally of deaths at the hands of police officers is maintained in the United States, a reality that defies common sense in our hypercataloged society, but estimates from journalists and advocacy groups put the number of Americans killed by the police north of 1,000 .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ .. per year. Black Americans are killed by the police at a much higher rate .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ .. than white Americans.
When citizens dare to protest police violence, say by kneeling at a sporting event .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/opinion/colin-kaepernick-amnesty-international-speech.html?searchResultPosition=1 .. , they are branded “anti-police” and un-American. With a shrinking recourse in the courts and a fierce headwind of social resistance to reforming the way the nation is policed, is it any wonder that many enraged Americans take to the streets — in the midst of a global pandemic, no less — to demand that their country change?
There are few things that Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Clarence Thomas agree on, at least when it comes to the letter of the law. Both have expressed deep concern .. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/george-floyd-supreme-court-police-qualified-immunity.html .. over the court’s drift toward greater and greater qualified immunity for police officers. (“By sanctioning a ‘shoot first, think later’ approach to policing, the Court renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow,” Justice Sotomayor once wrote .. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-1143_f20h.pdf .) With the next George Floyd just a bad cop away, one hopes the other justices will be moved to ratchet back qualified immunity to circumstances in which it is truly warranted. When bad cops escape justice and trust between the police and the community shatters, it isn’t just civilians who suffer the consequences, it’s the good cops, too.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
