Facial recognition technology is increasingly being deployed by police officers across the U.S., but the scope of its use has been hard to pin down.
In Miami, it’s used for cases big and exceedingly small, as one case Reason recently reviewed showed: Miami police used facial recognition technology to identify a homeless man who refused to give his name to an officer. That man was arrested, but prosecutors quickly dropped the case after determining the officer lacked probable cause for the arrest.
the ‘officers arrest person refusing to identify themself’ is pretty standard abuse across the country regardless.
the only way to stop that is to allow us actually prosecute police officers.
remove qualified immunity. require insurance for each individual officer. prosecute bad officers.
we can do this
the only cops that complain clearly have something to hide, right?
We shouldn’t even need to “remove” qualified immunity. We do, but you we shouldn’t. Qualified immunity already excludes violations of statutory/constitutional rights. It already shouldn’t be protecting pretty much any incompetent cops. Showing it was a violation of training – that is, that the officer was incompetent – should be enough to re move the protection.
The original standard as applied to police required they be able to show they were acting in good faith in a situation where the law is not clear. For Christ’s sake it was established by an Earl Warren decision – from probably the ONLY time in US history the SCOTUS has mostly been a force that strengthened civil rights instead of deleting them – and it somehow has become this bulwark of the police state over time.
Even now it is supposed to be a 2 part test: first, can the official show they believed in good faith they were behaving lawfully and second was the conduct objectively reasonable. Most police abuse shouldn’t pass either pillar of that test.
It isn’t even originally statutory. It came from the SCOTUS legislating from the bench.
The idea that qualified immunity should protect police is utterly absurd to begin with. Qualified immunity is what stops a bureaucrat for being sued for stamping approval on a zoning change according to the policies of his job. It’s just a category mistake to apply it to 95% of police activities.
The insurance solution sounds good until you remember it’s the taxpayer that foots the bill and a private industry that reaps the profit. The cost is basically external to the department so it is unlikely to seriously change their behaviors absent a separate and more complete cultural shift to one where the police are viewed as public servants instead of… well, police.
maybe the insurance should be paid by the unions.
it should be hard to stay in a police union.
