There may not be a more dangerous “reform” for law enforcement than the ending of qualified immunity for America’s heroes behind the badge. In a sense, the lie that qualified immunity protects bad cops from being held accountable is illogical. But the misinformed idea has nonetheless gained some momentum as agencies and politicians across America have either removed qualified immunity or are working towards doing so.
To the uneducated, it sounds like a great thing to do—until you recognize it’s a complete scam. First, police qualified immunity was deliberated and approved by the United Supreme Court and follows the long established doctrine of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. And despite routine challenges, the court has upheld the doctrine of qualified immunity time and time again, and for good reason.
So an important question that many confused abolitionists of qualified immunity want to ignore is this: why would the U.S. Supreme Court—which has largely been divided among political points of view for decades— want to “protect bad cops,” as the liars suggest.
Is it because woke-minded, look-at-me politicians are better informed, or is it that the justices of the United States Supreme Court happen to understand the truth about qualified immunity for law enforcement?
And big part of the truth, the woke also want to ignore: qualified immunity only protects cops when they perform their job within the law and their agency policy. It protects good cops from doing the right thing and then facing a huge financial burden from fighting frivolous lawsuits. Qualified immunity does not protect cops who do something beyond the law.
But the most ironic, if not hypocritical thing of all is this: the same woke-minded, pandering politicians who want to take qualified immunity from law enforcement, want to keep it for themselves.
Indeed, as politicians, including the democrats in Congress, are making moves to end qualified immunity for police, they’re also making moves to keep it for themselves—along with judges, teachers and other government officials.
Ending qualified immunity will end law enforcement—and unleash a new era of crime
If the commonsense protections that protect politicians, teachers, and other officials are revoked from law enforcement, it will be the end of law enforcement as we know it—and the start of a new era of rampant crime. And while this may not mean that cities across America will no longer have police officers, they just won’t have police officers that engage in effective law enforcement activities. Violent crime is already surging in cities across America, so it doesn’t take much to imagine what cities will look like in this new era of rampant crime.
And a major part of the problem is that without qualified immunity—and protection from every frivolous lawsuit criminals can conjure up—all the good, hard-working cops are going to avoid engaging criminals.
And it would be hard to blame them.
Do we as a society expect anyone to do a job where every decision they make puts everything they have at risk—while having to pay attorney fees and court costs while trying to stave off likely never-ending frivolous lawsuits?
The answer is clear—especially since politicians desperately want to keep qualified immunity for themselves.
Frankly, while we don’t expect the common citizen to know the truth about qualified immunity, the less-than-truthful politicians attempting to take it away know precisely what they are doing.
They know they are using a lie to get the public’s approval.
And they know exactly what will happen if qualified immunity is removed.
Abolishing law enforcement is not a popular subject with Americans, as the exit polling in 2020 suggested, and the politicians know this.
This is why they have invented another way of doing it.
The national police reform bill is sitting in the United States Senate right now. And if enacted, it will end qualified immunity for federal law enforcement, with the threat to pull federal grant money to the local agencies that do not adopt it.
Abolishing police is not just a crazy idea that will never occur. It’s happening at this very moment. And criminals—and the politicians who are exploiting them—couldn’t be more delighted.
That is, unless we do something about it.
