Saturday, January 28, 2023

"Cops Kill Because We Gave them the Legal Framework to Do It"

Excellent article by James Bovard, "Cops Kill Because We Gave them the Legal Framework to Do It," published in May 2020 following the George Floyd killing. Even more relevant today after the Tyree Nichols killing.  

Several excellent points.  One, instead of targeting racial justice stoked by race baiters Rev. Al Sharpton and others following a young man's murder, organize against the legal agencies that grant and protect these kinds of crimes with impunity and qualified immunity.

Focusing on racial bias also risks obscuring the fundamental problem: the Supreme Court has effectively given police a license to shoot, pummel, or falsely arrest ill-fated citizens across the nation. 

Let this sink in.  Police brutality is the result of federal, state, and municipal laws that grant cops immunity for aggressive even violent actions and decisions.

James Bovard again,

How does the Supreme Court’s idealism on “good faith” G-men play out in the real world?  Courts have “approved qualified immunity for cops who allegedly shot people without cause, sicced a dog on a man who was surrendering, tased a driver who was stopped for failing to buckle his seat belt, and ordered a 17-year-old boy to disrobe and masturbate so they could take pictures of his erect penis,”  Reason columnist Jacob Sullum reported in 2019. That year, a federal appeals court bizarrely granted qualified immunity to Fresno, California, police officers who stole $225,000 during a search of two businessmen.

Congress writes bills and passes laws, then when unintended, because unforeseen, consequences and evils occur it's "We see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." 

But Congress has, as usual, been asleep on the job. As Dan Alban, an Institute for Justice attorney and  the nation’s most effective litigator against asset forfeiture abuses, observed, Congress could pass legislation “clarifying that there is no qualified immunity” for civil rights lawsuits against state and federal officials.

Politicians make things worse.

But the problem goes far beyond qualified immunity. Politicians criminalize practically everything in daily life and then tell police “be nice”—or maybe mandate that cops attend  sensitivity training. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a blizzard of new mandates and prohibitions that further empower police. A video went viral earlier this month of a New York Police Department officer tackling and pummeling a young black man who was suspected of violating new dictates on social distancing. One wonders if there are a hundred such instances of idiotic brutality for each one that trends on Twitter today.

See how politicians make this crime worse.

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