For Immediate Release: June 15, 2020
Supreme Court: No Consequences for Police Who Destroy Home, Mistakenly Shoot 10-Year-Old Boy, or Sic Police Dog on Suspect Already Under Arrest
WASHINGTON, DC — Despite growing calls to hold police accountable for using excessive force in non-threatening circumstances, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review any cases challenging the doctrine of “qualified immunity,” which shields police from liability for official wrongdoing.
The qualified immunity cases in which the Court denied cert involved a SWAT team’s destruction of a home by bombarding it with tear gas grenades, a police dog that was ordered to attack a man who had already surrendered, and the mistaken shooting of a 10-year-old boy by a cop who was aiming for a non-threatening family dog. The Rutherford Institute and a coalition that included the DKT Liberty Project, the Due Process Institute, and Reason Foundation had asked the Court to reign in police abuses by holding police accountable to the rule of law.
“This refusal by the Supreme Court to hold police accountable for official misconduct is a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “In the police state being erected around us, the police and other government agents can probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, no matter how egregious or in opposition to the Constitution.”
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