BATON ROUGE – The attorney who represents the Louisiana Fraternal Order of Police is cautioning state lawmakers to think twice about doing away with qualified immunity for law enforcement officers.
Donovan Livaccari told the Louisiana Record that taking away such protections from civil litigation would be a disincentive for people to enter the profession, which typically doesn’t pay high-end salaries.
“I don’t know how it would be a smart decision to choose law enforcement as a profession,” Livaccari said, adding that he knew of no insurance policies that would step in and provide the liability coverage if the government revoked it.
The Louisiana Fraternal Order of Police has closely followed the unanimous vote by a House of Representatives subcommittee last month to eliminate protections from lawsuits related to officer-involved fatal shootings or injuries. Such protections do not shield officers from criminal prosecution, but they do provide protections from financial damage awards in civil suits.
Critics of qualified immunity, however, see it as maintaining a high bar for lawsuits against police officers – and a hurdle to holding problem officers accountable.
Under the current system of qualified immunity, courts must look at whether the officer’s behavior represented a violation of a person’s constitutional rights, as well as whether the officer had been advised that such behavior constituted such a violation, according to Livaccari. If both prongs of the inquiry are true, qualified immunity does not apply, he said.
But if the answer to one of the queries is no, the court would dismiss the lawsuit, Livaccari said.
State lawmakers are also discussing some other law enforcement reforms, such as a ban on chokeholds and no-knock warrants under some conditions. Livaccari called those types of reforms more reasonable than tossing out qualified immunity.
“We’re trying to ensure that moving forward, law enforcement is trying to provide the best service it can to communities where they serve,” he said.
It’s unclear that removing qualified immunity protections would lead to a rise in the number of lawsuits being filed against police officers, though judges might allow a greater proportion of filed lawsuits to advance, according to Livaccari.