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Comment by tjs8rj | Hacker News Reader

To be clear: qualified immunity is about civil liability. It doesn’t protect from criminal liability. Qualified immunity isn’t the reason cops don’t go to jail for murder, because it doesn’t apply at all for criminal procedures

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That would be fine if it were possible to criminally prosecute the cops.

But it isn't; only the government can do that, and they don't want to.

They are doing it right now.

This is an extremely rare event.

In this case their was abundant video.

Usually no one is around when cops are being bad, and their cop cams are always flipped off?

I don't know. There is a long history of cops being "prosecuted" in court theater and being found not guilty. This is generally only in high-profile cases. It is still fairly common to simply suspend an officer or "fire" them, allowing them to get a job in another department. So common that when we investigate folks in the high-profile cases, a history of misconduct isn't a surprise.

However, a civilian cannot normally press criminal charges against a cop, so the distinction is moot in practice.

That’s interesting. I thought it gave immunity against criminal prosecution if the officer «accidentally» did something criminal.

The obvious solution is to ensure that police are actually tried and sentenced like regular citizens if they break criminal law, but I suppose we can’t have nice things.

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