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fishythepete t1_jansiy9 wrote

Reply to comment by buddhamanjpb in Rhode Island woman dies in police custody in Tennessee by Meatball_Grinder

Upvote to remove the down someone gave you.

>Qualified Immunity needs to be taken away and police need to be held accountable for their actions like the rest of the population.

I guess I just don’t see what about this situation is so egregious that the officers need to be held liable not only in their role as officers, but personally as well? If you are in a hospital, and a doctor grabbed you and said “I need your help quick - do XYZ!”, would you? I think a reasonably prudent person would and defer to a doctors medical expertise. Like it or not, that’s what the cops did here.

They’ll surely be sued, and the municipality will pay something, even though the hospital made the professional error. But they should be personally held liable too? Because they took a doctors opinion on a medical question? Eh.

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totoop t1_janvqh0 wrote

I see what you're saying and it does make some sense but in the end this woman is dead. The police were the last people charged with her custody. In the video the woman is clearly asking for help and saying she can't breath which is met with officers saying "clearly she's faking it.......yeah clearly she is but if she ends up not being able to breath that will be a big problem"

They understood the severity of the issue, they chose to disregard it even after acknowledging the severity, because they convinced themselves their assumptions (based on their own professional judgement and actions of the hospital) were justified when they were clearly very, very wrong.

Even if this woman was "faking it", is it so unreasonable for the public to still demand a level of professionalism and responsibility out of their public servants. I don't care if this woman was faking it, treat her with compassion and professionalism and do your god damn job.

I do agree with your assessment though, they'll all be sued, nobody will really face any disciplinary action, a settlement will be reached and taxpayers will foot the bill and nothing will be learned. Rinse and repeat until the next negligent death pops up and we go through this cycle all over again.

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buddhamanjpb t1_janu8pb wrote

You're right in the fact that this situation isn't as cut and dry as others where qualified immunity has let officers go free of responsibility and putting the taxpayers on the hook for a lawsuit. At the end of the day though, this woman died after she told the officers she couldn't breathe and said "I'm going to die". They literally accused her of faking. There are so many other, more productive ways this could have been handled and I do think that part of this is to blame on the officers.
I suppose this wasn't the best example of why qualified immunity needs to go away. I'm honestly just so tired of seeing police all across the country get away with murdering civilians and not facing consequences. I'm also not someone that hates on police all day. It's ok to support Police but also want to fix the system.

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