When I think of the summer of 2020, I will always think of fire. The literal scorched earth in response to state violence, the burning rage against incessant injustice, the names of black victims that will be forever seared into my mind.
But while the fires have swirled throughout our cities, their flames have not been hot enough to incinerate the numerous laws and practices that uphold and protect our corrupt system.
On Tuesday, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, announced it had reached a $12 million settlement with Breonna Taylor’s family, a memorable and recent victim of policing gone wrong. But it’s important to remember that even when victims or their families receive settlements for wrongdoing (most don’t), that money comes from us — the taxpayers. We are the only ones on the hook for misconduct, and those actually responsible for it face little to no accountability.
In 2018, more than $85 million in taxpayer money went toward settling police misconduct lawsuits, along with an additional $28 million to outside defense attorneys. Not only is that a tremendous waste of our resources, the lack of consequences for violating our rights means there is no incentive for police to reform from within.
That’s in part thanks to the made-up court doctrine of qualified immunity, which shields government actors from civil liability in cases involving the deprivation of statutory or constitutional rights. While ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it as a citizen (and will get you no leniency in the courts), this doctrine turns that premise on its head for law enforcement and puts the burden of proof on a citizen to show that their rights were violated and that the actor had clearly established knowledge of such at the time of the offense.
Because of this doctrine, police are very rarely held accountable for misconduct in the field.
Despite numerous calls to arrest the cops involved in the Taylor case, only one has even been terminated, and charges remain unlikely. Qualified immunity isn’t the only reason for that, but it is a prominent one.
Taylor’s case involved gross negligence, incompetence, and disregard for human life. People are right to cry out for justice in the wake of such horrors.
In case you aren’t up to speed on the details, here is what we know. Taylor was a driven, hard-working, emergency medical technician. She had recently split from an ex-boyfriend, who was under investigation for selling drugs, and reunited with her straight-laced college boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. On March 13, Louisville cops executed a no-knock warrant on her home while she and Walker slept, all in an attempt to find drugs or cash proceeds from their sale.
Louisville police say they knocked that evening, and Walker backs that up. But according to him, they never responded to inquiries of who was at the door, and neighbors have confirmed they also heard no response. The police then knocked down the door, upon which Walker fired his legally owned and permitted firearm in self-defense. After that, police opened fire on the home and everyone in it, callously shooting at multiple residents (bullets were also found in a neighbor’s apartment). Taylor was shot eight times and died in her hallway floor. She was 26 years old.
The outdated “tough on crime” ideology has failed more colossally than almost any other (excepting various forms of collectivism). Yet, its practices are still heavily in use. No-knock raids are an implementation of the failed war on drugs. The claim is that police need to use them to surprise and apprehend dangerous offenders. In reality, they have mostly just gotten innocent people killed. It’s also important to recognize that no-knock raids put police needlessly in harm’s way, instigating violence where there is none previously occurring.
Anyone who claims to be a supporter of the Second Amendment should be outraged at the outright assault on our rights in scenarios such as this. Of course, if someone barges into your home in the middle of the night, you have a right to defend yourself. Yet, groups such as the National Rifle Association have been stone-cold silent, even as police initially tried to charge Taylor’s boyfriend for attempting to protect his own life.
It’s of note that police also tried to offer Taylor’s ex-boyfriend a lenient plea deal if he would implicate their victim in his drug business. He has continued to deny Taylor was involved.
It’s time for those who claim to stand for individual liberty, pro-life causes, and limited government to have a reckoning with the war on drugs and other failed, overreaching policies from the “tough on crime” era. These policies have only ever been tough on human rights. They create victims over nonviolent crimes. They needlessly put law enforcement in harm’s way. They waste billions. They ruin and take lives.
Criminal justice reform is already popular on both the Right and Left, but both sides need to double down in consistently pushing for a transformed justice system that eradicates these asinine practices. To really commit to reform means insisting on accountability for government actors within the system.
Right now, when police (government) actors violate us, we are the ones who pay. We pay with our tax dollars, we pay with our rights, and some of us pay with our lives. Instead of burning through our tax dollars, the doctrine of qualified immunity should be burnt to ashes and scattered to the wind.
Hannah Cox (@HannahCox7) is a libertarian-conservative activist and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
