How SCOTUS Turned Cops Into Unaccountable Monsters

In Shielded, UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz discusses how the legal system protects police from being held accountable for abuses of power. She examines various topics such as qualified immunity and no-knock warrants to illustrate how civil rights litigation rarely leads to justice or prevents future police misconduct. The book draws on real-life stories of individuals from different backgrounds seeking restitution for violated rights. Through her work, Schwartz sheds light on the human cost of a failing criminal justice system. Shielded is a timely and important investigation into a problem that is widely known but not well understood, offering insight into the true meaning of calls for "justice."

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So let's turn to the standard that you were kind just discussing earlier. The Monroe v Pape case in 1961. And then the kind of chipping away at the attempt at bringing back some sort of ability for people to get recourse from police. Take us through how the Modern Standard that we apply to these issues of police brutality kind of happened in Supreme Court case law. Absolutely so there are several different ways in which the Supreme Court's decisions have chipped away at that right to sue. One of those is the qualified immunity Doctrine. Which protects officers even when they have violated the Constitution if they can't if there isn't a prior Court decision with nearly identical facts. And that has gotten a lot of attention. but other Supreme Court decisions have a large impact as well. consider the Supreme Court's decisions that just interpret what the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution means. That is a protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. but how the Supreme Court has interpreted that language of the Fourth Amendment police can stop and frisk someone walking down the street, stop their car, and search their car for really almost no reason at all. All the court has described there needs to be a reasonable suspicion but how they've interpreted it allows that officers can make those stops on a pretext based on race based on ethnicity. So long as they can come up with a justification afterward for the Stop itself. There's similar latitude given to police when it comes to the use of force. Police can shoot someone and assault someone who has done nothing wrong. Who does not have a weapon? Even those who are holding their hands up in the air so long as the officer says after the fact I feared for my life. if they have a reasonable concern that force is going to be used against them they can use Force themselves. And it's these standards are so vague that it really does give police tremendous power. I talk in the book about 11 different protections but I guess I'll say I'll offer one more which is protections against local governments.