More of that pernicious double standard:
What Dix did to Martha Bledsoe was criminal. It cost him his job, and cost the taxpayers of Escambia County $250,000 in a settlement. And this after Dix cost the taxpayers $150,000 in a previous settlement for using a Taser on a man who was trying to comfort his wife after an accident.
Dix inflicted apparently permanent damage on Bledsoe, who had called the Sheriff's Office to report an alleged case of child abuse.
Her reward? The deputy who responded -- Dix -- ended up blasting her four times with his stun gun, after, for reasons that remain unexplained, he became agitated with Bledsoe.
It's undeniable that the system protects its own when you look at cases like this. It's the one extremely self-destructive feature of the "criminal justice system" that could very well end up bringing it down one day. The tendency of prosecutors and judges to forgive or lightly punish monumentally felonious conduct by police officers will only serve to erode public trust in the system's integrity, which is not exactly at a high already.
There was a case that the author of that piece pointed out that reminded me of an even worse double standard. In Florida, a police officer was only lightly busted for coercing a sixteen year old girl to do jumping jacks topless in order to get out of a ticket. Now if any non-governmental authority figure did that, they would be in pretty much any jurisdiction looking at several solid years behind bars and being labeled as a dangerous sex offender.
The solution to these problems is very simple. Take away all of the qualified immunity. If the agents of the system have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear. Their own actions will be found to be lawful and vindicated by the light of public scrutiny. There is no reason for a police officer to ever be allowed to use a level of force against a private citizen's person, that one private citizen could not use against another. In such situations where they exceed that, the color of law should not protect them; it should protect the private citizen who retaliates with force in self-defense.
I know that that solution scares the hell out of liberals and many law and order conservatives, which is something of a feature I suppose. It would work for a simple reason. The courts are by design there to sort this sort of thing out. You shoot a cop who was doing his job, the jury convicts you, game over for you. People read about your conviction for a poor choice on using force, and they learn to refine their critical thinking skills. However, the cop is tasering a woman half to death and you blow his head off like you would a common criminal, the jury finds you to be a good neighbor to the poor woman and it's case and casket closed.
Hat tip: The Agitator.
Unfortunately, EVERYONE has something to hide. It's just getting those who have major problems to be out of a system where they have built connections with others. That is one of the reasons it is so difficult to get something done about it.
If the guy was a 'complete' jerk, he would have already disappeared. Obviously he knows who to suck up to.
I think that strong deterrents on the use of force by authority figures can result in them choosing not to use force in questionable situations.
While that is good, when they're confronting someone who is actually (more or less) law-abiding, it doesn't work well when they are confronting an actual bad guy. I think it's likely to result in substantially more police officer fatalities.
Judgements must be made instantly, and then there's a lifetime to go over every possibility...
That already happens as a result of the threat of litigation, not the threat of getting shot dead. You might want to refer to this older post of mine which talks about a new study that says that many cops would rather be shot than face litigation. I think you could address both the litigation and the self-defense issue at the same time.
Now, the problem is that in many areas, you can shoot a cop in clear self-defense then the system can use the law to argue that you have no legal right to do that. That is what I want addressed by the law. If a cop is clearly breaking excessive force standards, you should have a right to use force to injure, maim or kill the cop if necessary like you could a regular criminal without fear of the system coming after you. At that point, you're afraid that the cop is going to maim or kill you, not arrest you.