Faith leaders oppose removing protections for police officers

MANSFIELD — On a largely party-line vote, the U.S. House of Representatives approved H.R.1280, a massive overhaul of American policing that would make it easier to sue police officers. If the bill becomes law, one of its provisions would abolish “qualified immunity” for all local, state, and federal law enforcement officers.  According to some leaders, this bill would open the floodgates of lawsuits.

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine shielding government officials from lawsuits unless they have violated clearly established law. According to local leaders, H.R. 1280 is misguided and eliminating qualified immunity will leave police officers slow to act when the law is unclear.

“I urge the Members of the U.S. Senate to vote ‘no’ on H.R. 1280 in its current form, wrote Richland County Sheriff Steve Sheldon in his letter to Ohio’s two U.S. Senators. “Eliminating qualified immunity will keep law enforcement officers from making crucial, split-second, life or death decisions to stop a lethal threat. Innocent victims and officers will be hurt or killed as a result. In addition, this bill will remove qualified immunity for peace officers in jail operations and allow lawsuits for medical decisions, failure to protect, suicides in jails, and many other situations not involving use of force.”

Sheriff Sheldon also believes H.R. 1280 is trying to micromanage local law enforcement agencies which will result in a mass exodus of police officers in large metropolitan areas where they are needed most.

Social justice movements to defund the police have grown since George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis. More than twenty major cities have reduced their police budgets in some form, though the scale and circumstances vary. Homicides and violent crime have skyrocketed in many of these cities following these budget cuts.

Pastor Robert Kurtz from Mansfield Baptist Temple serves as chaplain with the Sheriff’s Department. Besides riding along with deputies on duty, his duties include counseling police officers and also families dealing with homicide and suicide. He believes there area national players who want to remove local authority of the police.

“I think H.R.1280 demonstrates there are leaders in Washington D.C. that want to take local control away and to federalize our local police so they have more control.”

“There are many dangerous challenges that confront law enforcement officers in our streets today. I think the public forgets police officers are human beings too. Nationally, there were forty-five police officers from different racial backgrounds last year who were shot and killed in the line of duty. My observation is, with the legalization of so many illicit drugs, it is creating the atmosphere for violence and that is why we are seeing these combustible conditions. The Book of Proverbs tells us, ‘Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, ‘How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?”

Before castigating the police for the sake of social justice, it is wise to look at the data. Research conducted by a notable African-American economist at Harvard University reveals a lack of racial bias in police shootings. According to the statistics used in Professor Roland Fryer’s study, officers are more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspect is white. Fryer’s research analyzed more than a thousand shootings in ten major police departments.

Police use deadly force under 1,000 times out of 30 million violent felony criminal contacts per year, which is a 0.0004 percent chance of being shot by the police. In America, “there is a greater change of being struck by lightning than to be shot by police. In 2019, the NYPD with 35,000 officers only fired their weapons in the line of duty thirty-four times.

According to Reverend El Akuchie, “Qualified immunity allows police officers to first think about others in dangerous situations. Removing it will force police officers to first consider themselves before intervening which could harm the very people they are employed to serve. If nameless and faceless vaccine corporations like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna have qualified immunity, how much more should our often underpaid peace officers, who put their lives at risk and whose only wish at the end of the day is to come home safely.”

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The Bottom Line:

Hebrews 13:17 says, “Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.”