An Immune System

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2020

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

While it's technically possible to win a civil lawsuit against police officers for wrongdoing, there's a reason it almost never happens: a legal technicality called qualified immunity. On this episode, we look at how a law meant to protect Black people from racist violence gave way to a legal doctrine that many people see as the biggest obstacle to police reform.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Shireen Marisol Maraji.
0:01.7	I'm Jean-Demby and this is Code Switch.
0:04.5	From NPR.
0:07.6	In the wake of the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd,
0:11.9	people are re-asking hard questions about what exactly we should do with the police.
0:17.4	Should we abolish the police?
0:19.2	Defund them? Take them out of schools? Get rid of the bad apples?
0:23.6	Because police departments have proven again and again and again,
0:27.2	resistant to even like the most modest reforms.
0:30.5	Even the bad apples defense that you just mentioned,
0:32.9	it skirks past the fact that those bad apples rarely face any consequences.
0:37.6	Police officers seldom lose their jobs for brutality in this conduct.
0:41.7	They're rarely arrested or indicted, let alone convicted for wrongdoing in criminal cases.
0:48.2	When it comes to the police, people almost certainly cannot get justice in a criminal case
0:53.3	with criminal charges. But what if you decide it? Okay, okay.
0:56.6	I'm going to try to get redress by suing them in a civil case.
1:00.6	Well, it turns out that is virtually impossible because of this once-obscuring notion called
1:07.8	Qualified Immunity.
1:13.3	So let's say you are driving down the street, you get pulled over.
1:20.8	Josie Duffy Rice is a lawyer in the co-host of the Justice and America podcast at the Appeal,
1:25.6	a journalism organization that focuses on the criminal justice system.
1:29.1	A cop tells you to get out of your car, he beats you within an inch of your life,
	...

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