- Pigs 🐷🚔🐷
- Civil Rights Violation
Suspicion is not a crime.
Jury Award: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/02/ohio-jury-orders-police-officer-to-pay-44m-black-man-killed
On March 13, 2017, Luke Stewart was asleep in his car in Euclid, Ohio, when a man knocked on the window at 7 a.m. That man was Euclid Police Department (EPD) Officer Louis Catalani, though he did not announce himself as law enforcement. Startled, Stewart waved before starting the car and attempting to drive away.
Catalani and EPD Officer Matthew Rhodes weren't having it. The former opened the driver's side door, reaching his right arm around Stewart's face as he tried to dig into a pressure point underneath his jaw. Stewart began to scream. The latter entered via the passenger side and sought to eject Stewart from the vehicle. Neither effort worked, and Stewart drove off with Rhodes in tow.
A federal court last summer agreed that a reasonable jury could find that Rhodes violated Stewart's constitutional rights when the officer shot him dead—a confrontation set in motion because Stewart had fallen asleep in his parked car. He was never told he was under arrest, nor did Rhodes ever display his badge. Yet in the same breath, the court said that Stewart's estate may not bring their lawsuit before any such jury, because Rhodes was awarded qualified immunity.
Never announced they were cops. Sees a man just waking up after disturbing him. No de-escalating. No public safety issue at hand. Everything was quiet until cops showed up like they wanted to hijack the man. All behaviors of Luke Stewart were consistent with a man running for his life from robbers, but still the cop gets qualified immunity.
The more qualified immunity gets mentioned the more it will eventually get destroyed in major states and trickle down to the hold out states. It must be destroyed. The government cannot keep protecting itself from civil rights lawsuits if that's not what the people desire.