Did You Want Justin Brannan to Vote to Abolish Immunity for Police Officers?
NYC Council abolished qualified immunity for police officers on March 25th. Councilman Justin Brannan voted in favor of this. There were three other bills for police reform, but this bill went too far. (Info about the four NYC Council bills here)
NYC is the first city in the US to do this. (See here)
I waited to write about it because I wanted to see how Councilman Brannan would explain his vote.
As usual, Brannan said nothing about the vote – as if it didn’t happen or he didn’t want people to know how he voted. He’s writes on social media all day long and he didn’t think this was important enough to discuss.
If this was a good bill, then we would see every council member discussing it with their constituents.
This law puts police officers at risk of being sued financially. In situations like George Floyd or Eric Gardner, we saw where this would be needed. But ultimately this is going to bring a lot of lawsuits against police officers because many people don’t believe there should be any law enforcement. This puts police officer’s family savings at risk.
We want police officers to act correctly to the community, but we also don’t want their families to be hurt by frivolous lawsuits either.
I imagine that insurance companies will soon offer policies to cover police officers from lawsuits (the same way doctors are covered).
Nicole Malliotakis spoke out against the bill and defended the police.
Currently, if a police officer acts outside of department guidelines and found to commit wrongdoing, they can lose their indemnification. This misguided law will make them personally liable in any frivolous lawsuit. This is another step toward dismantling out police department. https://t.co/9x7ZHlcnlK
— Nicole Malliotakis (@NMalliotakis) March 28, 2021
I agree that this bill will also deter some people from becoming police officers.
Hugs,
marlene
Topics: Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
March 30th, 2021 at 12:03 pm
Yes, I absolutely wanted our councilman to vote this way. Morally and ethically I believe this vote his vote was correct. Also, since everything seems to have to fall within some frame of personal experience to mean anything these days, I come from a law enforcement family. My father, stepfather, godfather, 2 uncles, 1 cousin, and 2 nephews are all currently active duty or are retired NYPD officers. Qualified immunity literally allows police officers to get away with murder. The police unions only protect white officers from accountability and actively fight to prevent BIPOC officers from promotions and positions of influence within the department. The Guliani/Bloomberg administrations and the NYPD have harassed people of color throughout this city for years through their broken windows/CompStat policing and denied them their civil rights and the right to due process for years. As a person of color who has existed as a minority within the neighborhoods I was raised in and currently live in, I can recount many instances of police harassment for the crime of simply existing as a person of color in the “wrong neighborhood.” Inevitably, I would always get the worthless apology for their behavior once they knew my family was “on the job” as if this was an excuse for treating anyone as less than human. I understand you have a point of view and are concerned about a perceived uptick in crime in your community but also having experience with civilian consultants to the NYPD, their behavior doesn’t change with civilian oversight boards, despite overwhelming support for them, or retraining as courts have repeatedly upheld qualified immunity even when officers are clearly breaking the law. Eliminating qualified immunity may actually bring some form of accountability and possibly relief or change. Take care and Happy Easter, this is just another person’s point of view.
March 30th, 2021 at 12:16 pm
I understand why you feel the way you do and I am sorry that you had a lot of bad experiences with the NYPD. But not every police officer is being a jerk.
And I wouldn’t want a police officer’s family to suffer. They put their life on the line, but they shouldn’t need to put their family’s security on the line as well. NYC Council could have done better with accountability, but not hurting a police officer’s family.
March 31st, 2021 at 6:19 am
Whether you agree with it or not, the councilman voting this way on it and attempting to hide that vote is a cowardly move during an election year.
What’s Justin so afraid of?
March 31st, 2021 at 10:34 am
When Justin started out in office, he was very open with what he was voting on. If he thought it was beneficial, he would have shared it days ago.
April 1st, 2021 at 9:54 am
I follow Justin on Facebook and he didn’t mention voting this way. I’m not surprised because he voted to defund the police as well.
April 1st, 2021 at 5:34 pm
Consider this: according to the Wall Street Journal, NYC (i.e. taxpayers) had to pay $1.1 billion from 2015 to 2020 in settlements for NYPD misconduct lawsuits. In contrast, the next 2 largest U.S. cities with police misconduct lawsuits each paid out only about 1/4 of that amount within the same time period. (Note that these settlements did not include so-called *frivolous* lawsuits which were obviously thrown out.)
NYC has approximately two times the population of Los Angeles, yet NYC somehow requires four times the number of cops. The bombastic Police Union Bosses (Patrick Lynch, Ed Mullins) would have you believe the solution to crime is always more cops (more union dues which = political power) and that their members are constantly in lethal danger as if this were frontline Afghanistan.
Clearly there is a problem within the NYPD culture/administration which for whatever reasons seems to draw more than its share of bad apples.
(For your info, I’m no activist and have never participated in aNY demonstration, but for reference I have lived in several large cities. I’m just another overburdened NYC taxpayer who pays a lot and gets little.)
April 2nd, 2021 at 11:07 am
Reforms are needed in NYC. But when it can hit a police officer’s family, that isn’t fair.
Firing the officer for repeated misconduct is absolutely fair. Taking money from an officer’s family and making them fearful that they can’t pay their bills should not have been acceptable. Frivolous lawsuits will definitely be attempted.