SDPD Shooting Video Shows Need for Changes in Policing
The San Diego Police Department provided compelling evidence yesterday as to why passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is a needed step in reforming law enforcement in the US.
Yesterday the House of Representatives passed an expansive policing overhaul measure named for the 46-year-old Black man who died last Memorial Day after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee against his neck for over nine minutes...
Meanwhile, in San Diego... Officer Kelly Besker was on patrol in the Gaslight District on February 25 when an individual told him about a dude with “a kitchen knife acting crazy.” (The date on the officers’ bodycam turns out to have been incorrect)
There was a man eating from a carryout container, when the Besker pulled up to the location in question. The area was littered with what appeared to be the individual’s possessions. Upon questioning by the officer, the man said that his cart had been kicked over by a passing motorist.
He denied having a knife, and was clearly mentally distressed..
The man backed away as officer Becker aggressively approached and asked him to put his food down. As he turned sideways a knife was spotted in his back pocket. He was told not to reach for the knife but did so anyway.
Moments later the as yet unidentified older homeless human was laying on the sidewalk bleeding after having been shot three times. Watching the video, it’s hard to believe officer Becker was ever in danger.
https://twitter.com/HomelessnessSD/status/1367485391939330048?s=20
https://twitter.com/TheActivatedPod/status/1367293051601711107?s=20
Basic de-escalation techniques were not deployed. The officer’s aggressive behavior made this happen.
Officer Kelly Besker doesn’t have to worry about more than a slap on the hand for his actions. Given the rapid release of this video, I suspect he will be disciplined.
But the circumstances allowing him to act this manner will remain. You see, police are protected by qualified immunity.
Here’s an excerpt from an explainer at The Appeal: (Emphasis mine)
The Supreme Court invented qualified immunity in 1967, describing it as a modest exception for public officials who had acted in “good faith” and believed that their conduct was authorized by law. Fifteen years later, in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, the Court drastically expanded the defense. The protection afforded to public officials would no longer turn on whether the official acted in “good faith.” Instead, even officials who violate peoples’ rights maliciously will be immune unless the victim can show that his or her right was “clearly established.” Since the Harlow decision, the Court has made it exceedingly difficult for victims to satisfy this standard. To show that the law is “clearly established,” the Court has said, a victim must point to a previously decided case that involves the same “specific context” and “particular conduct.” Unless the victim can point to a judicial decision that happened to involve the same context and conduct, the officer will be shielded from liability.
The Supreme Court has recognized one exception to this rule, in Hope v. Pelzer. There, corrections officers disciplined a prisoner by handcuffing him to a hitching post for seven hours, with his hands above his shoulders, shirtless in the summer sun. At one point a guard taunted the prisoner by giving water to a guard dog in plain sight. Faced with these circumstances, and no prior case that had confronted similar facts, the Supreme Court ruled that the officers’ cruelty was “so obvious” that they should have had “fair warning” that their conduct violated the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Far from creating a meaningful exception, however, courts frequently consider the circumstances in Hope to set the threshold for how egregious an officer’s behavior must be before he is considered to have “fair warning.”
Which brings us back to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which will likely never see the light of day in the Senate, despite support from President Biden.
In addition to limits on qualified immunity, this legislation would ban no-knock warrants in certain cases, mandate data collection on police encounters, prohibit racial and religious profiling and redirect funding to community-based policing programs.
Via the Guardian:
The bill includes prohibitions on so-called qualified immunity, which shields law enforcement from certain lawsuits, and is one of the main provisions that will likely need to be negotiated in any compromise with Republican senators.
Police unions and other law enforcement groups have argued that, without such legal protections, fears of lawsuits will stop people from becoming police officers – even though the measure permits such suits only against law enforcement agencies, rather than all public employees.
The California congresswoman Karen Bass, who authored the bill, called provisions limiting qualified immunity and easing standards for prosecution “the only measures that hold police accountable, that will actually decrease the number of times we have to see people killed on videotape”.
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post emailed to you check out the simple subscription form on the right side of the front page.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com