Abolish Qualified Immunity

This court-invented doctrine shields bad cops from civil liability.

- By Damon Root

“As it stands in America today, the police aid in the trampling of rights on such a massive scale that there is hardly a word sufficiently descriptive. Limited liability? The price of retribution due to the victims of the crimes committed by police on any single day would be beyond calculation, yet not only do these crimes go undenounced (for the most part), and the perpetrators, police and politicians, unpunished, but, even worse, the victims are forced through taxes to finance the operation and salaries of the criminals.”

LANNY FRIEDLANDER | “THE COPS: HEROES OR VILLAINS?” | NOVEMBER 1969

IN DECEMBER 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that a former Ferndale, Michigan, police officer named Lowell Phillips violated the Constitution when he shot and killed a fleeing suspect. Laszlo Latits “showed a persistent intent to flee but not an intent to injure, and never placed the public or the officers at imminent risk,” the court observed of the incident, which began with a traffic stop over a wrong-way turn onto a divided boulevard and ended four minutes later with Latits dead of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen.