Campaign To End Qualified Immunity Co-Chair Jerry Greenfield recently appeared on Between The Lines to discuss qualified immunity and how the legal doctrine stifles accountability for bad police officers.
“It is this legal doctrine that essentially was concocted by the Supreme Court that requires lower court judges to ignore whether any laws were broken and dismiss cases unless another police officer had been found guilty previously in a similar situation. So what it does is it shields police from accountability,” said Greenfield.
During the course of the discussion, host Scott Harris sought Greenfield’s assessment of how Congress could take action to end qualified immunity this legislative session.
“I think the general feeling is that there will be some type of police reform bill that comes up before Congress this year. What we’re trying to do is make sure that the idea and program of ending qualified immunity does not get stripped out of there. I think often when bills are proposed, people are compromising and taking things out and ending qualified immunity is so fundamental and so essential that we need to make sure that it stays in there,” said Greenfield.
Listen to the full discussion here.