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“I know what the perfect bill will be. We have proposed that,” the congressman from South Carolina added. “I want to see good legislation, and I know that, sometimes, you have to compromise.” He defended police officers, called for good people to join police forces and blamed problems with policing on ‘bad apples’ … If we don’t get qualified immunity now, then we will come back and try to get it later,” the congressman said. “But I don’t want to see us throw out a good bill because we can’t get a perfect bill.”
Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, tweeted on Sunday: “Well perhaps they’re no longer calling it the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Because without provisions ending qualified immunity for officers and strengthening the ability to bring federal criminal prosecutions against officers, it should not bear that name.”
Retired Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Cheryl Dorsey asked the Black News Channel why you would want to settle for a good bill. Then she said without qualified immunity, the proposed legislation is not even a good bill. “They act as if accountability is a four-letter word and they just won’t use it.”
The Root writer Michael Harriot told the channel people are frustrated with the Democratic Party’s moderate attitude and willingness to negotiate with “what is literally people’s lives … There are people who fear for their lives when they see a police officer’s car pull up behind them.”
Former first lady Michelle Obama told CBS on Monday “many of us still live in fear, as we go to the grocery store, or worry about walking our dogs, or allowing our children to get a license.” She said she worries for her daughters, Sasha and Malia. “They’re driving, but every time they get in a car by themselves I worry about what assumption is being made by somebody who doesn’t know everything about them, the fact that they are good students and polite girls. But maybe they’re playin’ their music a little loud.
“Maybe somebody sees the back of their head and makes an assumption. I, like so many parents of Black kids, have to [worry] that the innocent act of getting a license, puts fear in our hearts.”
Art Tobias wasn’t even old enough to drive when police targeted him. He was 13 years old, journalist Billy Binion said in his call to end qualified immunity. The doctrine was used to protect Los Angeles Police officers who coerced a confession from Tobias, leading to his wrongful conviction for murder. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in May of 2013 and wasn’t released until June 11, 2015, Binion reported for Reason Magazine. “Cops told the boy that if he didn’t confess, the courts would ‘throw the book’ at him,” Binion tweeted in a thread on May 5. “Perhaps worse, they said his own mother had identified him as the murderer, & that she would have to testify against him. That … wasn’t true.”
The journalist added: “It somehow gets more ridiculous. The 9th Circuit conceded that the interrogation tactics were abusive. But because the **exact amount of time** it lasted—under two hours—wasn’t carved out in a prior court precedent, he cannot sue on that claim. Abolish. qualified. immunity.”
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