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Two Cops One Donut
Behind the Blue Line: Qualified Immunity Exposed
What happens when a legal doctrine meant to protect good police becomes a shield for official misconduct? In this explosive debate, we dive deep into qualified immunity with experts from both sides of the thin blue line.
Force Science expert Von Kliem squares off against civil rights advocate Mr. BillFold in a passionate examination of whether qualified immunity serves its intended purpose. The discussion reveals startling statistics: only one-third of civil rights cases against officers involve qualified immunity defenses, and 99.98% of officers who lose qualified immunity protection never pay a dime out of pocket due to municipal indemnification.
The conversation tackles the "clearly established" standard that requires nearly identical precedent cases for rights to be protected—creating a troubling scenario where even obvious constitutional violations can escape accountability. We examine cases like Baxter v. Bracey, where officers received immunity after releasing a police dog on a surrendered suspect simply because he was sitting rather than lying down when he surrendered.
Our panelists debate whether qualified immunity truly protects good officers making split-second decisions or primarily shields bad actors from accountability. The data suggests qualified immunity cases take 23% longer than typical federal civil rights cases, contradicting claims that the doctrine efficiently resolves frivolous lawsuits.
Perhaps most surprising is that police use of force cases represent only about 23% of qualified immunity cases, with many others involving government officials like mayors and administrators. Over half of First Amendment qualified immunity cases involve alleged premeditated violations—not the split-second decisions the doctrine was supposedly created to protect.
Join us for this eye-opening examination of a judicial doctrine that affects police accountability, civil rights, and the pursuit of justice in America. Whether you support or oppose qualified immunity, this conversation will challenge your understanding of how it actually functions in our legal system.
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Welcome to Two Cops One Donut podcast. The views and opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Two Cops One Donut, its host or affiliates. The podcast is intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. We do not endorse any guest's opinions or actions discussed during the show. Any content provided by guests is of their own volition and listeners are encouraged to form their own opinions. Furthermore, some content is graphic and has harsh language, viewer discretion advised and is intended for mature audiences. Two Cops One Donut and its host do not accept any liability for statements or actions taken by guests. Thank you for listening. Man, that intro guitar gets me every time. That's some smooth playing.
Speaker 2:Welcome back.
Speaker 1:Two cops, one donut. I'm your host, sergeant Eric Levine. I got with me today the normal crew. I got Mr Banning Sweatland as my co-host what's up, buddy? And then we got Detective Matt Thornton two weeks in a row, so this is a sweet treat. And then our two special guests tonight is the von kleem from force science. What's up, buddy, I know? And then we got mr bill fold, one of our very own members and audience members, back again. How's it going, buddy? I see y'all chatting in there.
Speaker 1:Yep, we see you guys talking today. Steve Wallace in the house, by the way, never misses a show. Today is the episode of Qualified Immunity. We managed to get just about everybody lined up that we were looking for, uh, just about everybody lined up that we were looking for. And, uh, today we're going to discuss between mr vaughn, uh, and mr billfold and we're going to go one is pro and one is against, so and we're going to discuss who's what and why, and then we're going to go to y'all in the uh chat and go through that um, but before we do that, you know we got stuff we got to get out of the way. See how everybody's doing, see what everybody's up to. Uh. Mr billfold, uh, I'm gonna give the floor to you first, buddy, how are you?
Speaker 2:man, I'm blessed. Every day I wake up winning, so you gotta try to be a loser after that you can't, you can't go wrong there.
Speaker 1:Von, sir, you have been a busy man. I have seen you in the news recently, saw you out there on the sure case I think it's a name was sure in michigan. You were, uh, you were looking astute on the stand and um, owning, absolutely owning. If you guys ever want to see somebody own a defendant or a defense attorney, watch that. Watch, von.
Speaker 4:Just destroy that dude uh that was not a defense attorney, that was a prosecutor yes, I, as I said it, I had to go back in my head.
Speaker 1:I was like no, no, I messed that up yeah.
Speaker 4:Well, I don't know if I, if I, owned anybody, but I can tell you that case may come up today during this discussion about you, about, maybe we should abolish prosecutorial immunity for stuff like that. Amen.
Speaker 1:Defend the community Absolute immunity. It's not going to be much of a debate up here, bob's too dreamy to debate.
Speaker 2:I can just coexist with this beautiful man.
Speaker 1:I told him when he put those ear pods in I goes. Now you kind of look like uh professor x.
Speaker 4:We just got to get him in the wheelchair. Make sure they know why the ear pods came in too.
Speaker 1:I think that's an important part of the story yeah, as we were doing our sound check, von decided to go hulk mode and snap the cord out of his microphone and break it, so now he's on the bluetooth mic von has made fun of people for wearing these exact headphones during podcasts because they couldn't get their sounds squared away.
Speaker 4:And uh, here I am karma's a bitch von.
Speaker 1:Oh man, all right, let's go over to the chat real quick. I see.
Speaker 2:Hold on one second, eric, if I may. I saw that. Patrick. Patrick said earlier that Patrick, true love, said that he's not feeling good, so he's just going to listen in, patrick, I'm sure somebody else will step in and do the good work for you. Hello, chat, love you guys.
Speaker 1:Yep, we got some from.
Speaker 2:Eric had to do that. I saw that earlier. I was going was gonna forget my eyes broke back in my head.
Speaker 1:I can't find you got that effect, buddy.
Speaker 4:I gotta pull off the lighting that the detective pulled off, so there's no so much glare on top. There you go yeah, I did my makeup.
Speaker 3:Good job, neil. I love it.
Speaker 1:I did my makeup.
Speaker 3:Good job.
Speaker 1:Neil, I love it yeah.
Speaker 2:I have a face for radio.
Speaker 1:That's the truth. The motherfucker looked like duck dynasty reincarnated.
Speaker 2:Matt help me.
Speaker 1:You know what. He's not here to protect me. You know who he kind of looked like Matt Think of a Christmas Carol, I think the eighties versions, version the, the one of the the ghosts. He looks like the, the, the first ghost, I believe, the one for christmas past that's one I never seen, bro, never seen, that's a scary one when I was a kid.
Speaker 1:Get the shit out of me, yeah, um, I might have to pull that picture up, but anyway. Uh, we got a lot from your chat, matt, so why don't you say hello to your peoples?
Speaker 3:What's up, people? I love you. Guys, all of you Agree, disagree. You follow me. I love you. I appreciate it. We love good conversation. That's what we're here for.
Speaker 1:Matt. You know what one of my favorite thing about your people is is how often they tell me that I'm not you. Oh my gosh. Yes, we can. We can air that out right now for y'all me and matt almost every day. Yes, and we totally agree. Matt and I are not the same people, but I think our hearts are in the right, right place and in the same place and that's why we've lined up, that's why we do what we do. We're not always going to, and that's kind of part of the show. Y'all.
Speaker 2:If we were the same people that would be really hard to fit in the underwear. Y'all would have to both just get one leg hole and it would be a mess.
Speaker 1:So I'm glad y'all are not the same person Harrison Brock already starting out the night. Good, marine Blood is on, so let's see guys. Brock already starting out the night. Good, marine blood is on, so let's see, guys. You guys know the game man.
Speaker 2:there's no way in hell that marine blood gets one.
Speaker 1:I don't think so either.
Speaker 2:He's got some settings going on.
Speaker 1:He did show me his settings and they were right. Unless he switches them back when we're done so, everybody has to keep drinking. All right, we're looking through. First and foremost, harrison. Thank you for the memberships. I'm looking through the names here. I am not seeing Marineblood, I am seeing the Big Fish, michelle, natalie, orange, butterfly.
Speaker 2:Semper Fi Marineblood.
Speaker 1:I'm not seeing it. Nope, that reminds us. Hey guys, if you like what we're doing, you like the guests that we get, please help support the show. If you can't do it financially, like Harrison just did, do it through follows. Subscribe to our channel Matt's channel everybody that's on there. Make sure you guys go check out Force Science Vaughn. I know you're a busy dude, but how in the world do you get the energy to do what you do in?
Speaker 4:the world. Do you get the energy to do what you do? Well, nights like tonight, I just grabbed my red bull and uh you're a couple of those.
Speaker 1:You're a red bull guy.
Speaker 4:Look at you, oh yeah, I'm converted and look they got these new seasons out, so I got a blue one. Sometimes I drink red.
Speaker 1:Tonight it's blue. Tonight it's blue. Is it got an actual flavor or is it just called blue?
Speaker 4:This one's sea blue, sugar-free Red Bull energy drink.
Speaker 1:Smart man.
Speaker 4:Sugar-free. That's going to keep us alive tonight.
Speaker 2:I like it so you guys have me going against a Vaughn Kleem with wings.
Speaker 3:Thanks a lot.
Speaker 2:Eric, I'm a welder and a fabricator, and this is the fourth science sorcerer hey.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you brought that up. First and foremost, thank you, Mom, for sending 10 bucks to the show. We love you. But that brings up a good point and this is something that I do. I have talked to Mr Bullfold, Mr Billfold at length. I have talked to Mr Bulfold at length. The man is a self-taught expert. He's taught me stuff that I did not know about qualified immunity and I will tell you guys this is why I never argue it because I don't know enough about it. I'm an idiot. He knows way more than I do, Vaughn obviously knows more than I do, Von obviously knows more than I do and Matt has actually spoke about qualified immunity quite a few times and I bet Matt would even tell you that he's not an expert Like we're just dumb cops and we know what we know about it and we can tell when we think it's being abused or not being abused and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Well, if I may jump in, since we got our people in the house, we got Matt's folks. I love you guys. I'm a member over there on Matt's channel as well. Sometimes we disagree about qualified immunity for a different reason, we'll get to it. But I wanted to say that I tried not to beat Eric up with it, but when he said honestly, hey, I don't know, I'm a dummy on it, I was like, well, ok, but I'm going to tighten you up, not because I'm trying to beat a cop up with ooh, listen to me, no, but because you deserve to know why I think qualified immunity is bad for good cops. So I was coming at you from the heart. I had no idea I'd ever have to deal with professor x over here trying to use force science sorcery on me on a live stream with matt thornton but hey, it is yeah, brother, okay, let's kick, let's kick this off we are 10 minutes in.
Speaker 4:I want imagine we agree on a whole lot of stuff on this and it's eric's going to be so upset when we're just walking the line together holding hands pretty much pretty much you guys know I'm not much of a planner, um, but on this one I wanted to get, wanted to get as much planning in as I could.
Speaker 1:so for those out there that may not be familiar with what qualified immunity is, I found this little, you know know, mr Bill of Rights cartoon, if you guys remember those.
Speaker 2:Eric couldn't use the Elmo when I sent him because of copyright so Right.
Speaker 1:So this one's coming out of US Law Essentials YouTube channel, so I'm going to give them credit. We did not make this. All All credit goes to them. I'm going to biggie size this and we are going to watch what qualified immunity is. This is about three minutes long, but this is also for people that just listen. I want to make sure they get a good explanation. That's quick and this one's not that bad, so we'll go over it. It may be a little slated, either for or against. I'm not 100% sure how you guys are going to take it. It's all gravy it a little slated, either for or against. I'm not 100% sure how you guys are going to take it, but it is what it is.
Speaker 6:Here we go Introduce qualified immunity In general. Qualified immunity protects police officers and other government officials in certain lawsuits. That is, the police officers are shielded or immune from civil liability. They cannot be held responsible if sued. Qualified immunity applies, provided the police officer made an honest mistake. So let's say there's a robbery and a photo of the suspect is circulated Because of the robbery.
Speaker 6:Police officers are on high alert and their top priority is catching the robber. Officer Dudley is eager to catch the suspect and while driving he sees Pete reading a book by a bus stop, thinking that the man is the bank robber. Officer Dudley arrests him, taken into custody, pete is held for the robbery, but it soon becomes pretty clear that the police have the wrong guy and naturally Pete is furious over his arrest. So Pete files a civil lawsuit against Officer Dudley for falsely arresting him. In his case Pete notes that between the hair, beard and glasses he and the suspect do not look very much alike and Pete demands money as compensation for the wrongful arrest.
Speaker 6:But Officer Dudley's lawyer is likely to raise qualified immunity as a defense. He'll argue that even if Officer Dudley violated Pete's rights, officer Dudley should be exempt from liability because he did not really know that he was arresting the wrong person. He'll claim he did not knowingly violate Pete's civil rights. He'll also argue that this was all a reasonable mistake and even if Officer Dudley was careless or negligent, he did not intentionally violate the law. He'll claim that Officer Dudley reasonably confused Pete for the suspect while he was driving by the bus stop. And if the judge agrees that this was a reasonable mistake, officer Dudley should qualify for immunity and he will be exempt from liability. To summarize, qualified immunity may shield police officers and other government officials from liability in certain civil lawsuits. If the officer makes a reasonable mistake regarding the law or a reasonable mistake of fact, he cannot be held liable for money damages. Qualified immunity will not apply in extreme circumstances where the officer acts incompetently or knowingly or unreasonably violates a person's rights.
Speaker 1:All right, there we go. Oh, my God.
Speaker 5:Does that instructor not look like the guy that's the karate instructor on Napoleon Dynamite?
Speaker 1:Sorry, man Go ahead, go ahead. All right, Mr Billfall, what you?
Speaker 2:got. Okay. Love you, eric. That was the absolute worst video you could have found, because none of that was correct. Because none of that was correct, because it literally said and I took notes that it was about a reasonableness standard when qualified immunity is the exact opposite. We don't let cases get to courts to be found whether the protections that the Fourth Amendment gives law enforcement for the reasonableness of their actions doesn't even get seen. I don't know what that video was, but folks, that wasn, wasn't it? Y'all do some other research if you really want to know, or stick around, but that wasn't it.
Speaker 2:Reasonableness standard is under the fourth amendment, but qualified immunity calling for that, asserting that defense, has nothing to do with that. It has to do with a clearly established uh, right at that time in that judicial district where you're at. Nothing to do with the reasonable and standard. I just want to get that out of the way. It's not about I. I back when I think it was Vaughn can correct me I'll. I'll hang myself if I speak out of school. But Pearson versus Ray, qualified immunity count and 67 comes to be out of whole cloth. But it's more about the good faith standard. You know, hey, he acted in good faith, that they're acting in good faith. We do this, and that was kind of how it was until 1982, when we got the clearly established part of the doctrine that came around okay, so I just I just wanted to lay that out there like that.
Speaker 2:This whole idea that this guy just said that well, you know it's, he acted reasonably well, it doesn't even get. We don't get to that, we don't get to establish any law because it doesn't get past qi. But other than that, I'll let von have it.
Speaker 4:He's going to straighten me out which got von I well, I agree that was a confusing uh video for a different reason, but I do understand the point he's making. I I where I might disagree is that when we talk about clearly established law which he's absolutely right about one of the points I want to make sure gets brought up in this entire night is the clearly established law, is the Fourth Amendment, that's what they're being judged again. Was there probable cause? Was there reasonable suspicion? Was the use of force reasonable? That's the constitutional standard. So we'll stay at the federal level. So those are nested in the concept of clearly established.
Speaker 4:I think his points well taken, though Mr Belfort's points well taken, that we're talking about qualified immunity often doesn't even get to the constitutional question. It doesn't even get to the reasonableness question it starts out with was it clearly established? I think was the point he was making. But what the question then becomes was what clearly established? And the answer is was the law clearly established right? Was their conduct in the context of that law? Was the violation obvious and beyond debate? It has to be so clearly established that it was obviously obvious and beyond debate. So that's sort of where that jurisprudence has evolved to. But he's right, it used to be a subjective standard, then it became an objective standard. It was a two-part test, then it became a two-part test, but either part could be flipped, and I think Mr Belford pointed out that sometimes when they flip it, they don't even get to the constitutional question. They don't even get to the reasonableness question when we're talking about reasonableness. That's what it is, that's derived from the Constitution. So tell me what I'm missing.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, vaughn, I think I was stepping on top of you and I apologize. I just want to say that I want to point out now, because the chat will pick up on this Clearly established is not baked into the Fourth Amendment. Reasonable standard that's not what it's about. Clearly established under the qualified immunity doctrine means that in this case, did an officer know, was there a case already on the books, either a Supreme Court law or in the judicial district they live in, that had damn, nearly identical facts and all of these things, things, and then been judged to have been a constitutional rights violation? And then it would. That's what the clearly establishes.
Speaker 2:We're not talking about the reasonableness we don't get. Reasonableness had nothing to do, has nothing to do with qualified immunity, because we don't get to. You know, I appreciate bringing it up. We're not talking about reasonableness. I mean, I'm talking about it because it protects you guys. I honestly believe that the reasonable witness standard baked in is baked in, like von said, into protecting good cops like you. Gentlemen, it's already there because you know we have only about a third of these cases, these uh 1983 cases that come people even use qualified immunity. Why? Because most cops are doing the right thing and they don't need to assert qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is the last ditch effort where they say, hey, we know that a right was violated. That's not even the question. Was this happened in this exact way at this exact set of facts, just nearly identical? If not, then it doesn't matter. If a right was violated because they have qualified immunity, we can get into. If you want to get court cases, you know we come. Sure Vaughn has them loaded up.
Speaker 2:I got them loaded up, but yeah reasonableness has nothing to do with with what was going on, so that video is kind of off. It was leading people down the primrose path, but that is not what's going on with qi folks. It's literally about clearly establishing law and I got a rabbit hole. We can go down later if y'all want.
Speaker 4:But yeah, so I I'm going to go back to the question then is was what clearly established right? What I understand what you're saying is to, to answer the clearly established question courts, there's One. It has to be so obvious that no prior court case is required, but those are rare and courts don't like to rely on the obvious exception to the clearly established rule that you're just finding. What we're talking about is was it, was their conduct, a violation of the constitutional rights, of that individual right? This is 1983. We're talking about violation of constitutional rights under carlo of law, that is, that it's 1983. Right, so when we're talking about a constitutional right, the constitutional right in a use of force case is the fourth amendment and the standard for that right is reasonableness. And so, if you're looking at, was the officer reasonable in their conduct in a specific context of a case? The question then is going to be well, now let's look at other cases and see if this question has been asked and answered.
Speaker 4:What I was going to take issue with was that officers can reasonably misinterpret the law. That's a different question, because officers are presumed to know the law that they're enforcing. They might misinterpret the application of the law, whether it applied in a particular case, or whether the violation occurred because that's just a probable cause and reasonable suspicion standard. That's fair. But they're presumed to know the law that they're enforcing and so oftentimes they come up and they say, oops, sorry, I thought it was illegal, I was wrong about that. That's going to be a more difficult challenge to assert qualified immunity against. So I would go back, because if we can't get past this phase of whether reasonableness is a part of the qualified immunity analysis, we're not going to really be able to move on. So I would just ask and maybe we're talking about the same thing so, mr bill, for if we talk about, okay, what has to be clearly established?
Speaker 2:I will. I'll set it up for you like this. Here's what I'm telling you as a doctrine, qualified immunity is a judicial drop doctrine. You're created out of whole cloth by the supreme court. Okay, now, clearly established, I'm not talking. There's reasonableness standard has, you know, created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court? Ok, now, clearly established, I'm not talking. There's reasonableness standard has nothing to do with the prongs of the qualified immunity case. And I'll give an example.
Speaker 2:I'm out of the 11th Circuit and everybody knows this is a pretty big one. You're going to hear it all across the way, but most of the people in the chat have probably heard this too. You had Corbett versus vickers. You know. It involved a police officer, uh, chasing a subject through a residential neighborhood and they catch the subject in the backyard of a family who's having a picnic and stuff, right. So the police order everybody onto the ground, everybody gets on the ground and everybody complies and they arrest the bad guy who had got in the backyard and everything was good. Well, the family dog comes out, doesn't attack anyone, but it comes out in the yard and the officer unloaded his gun at the dog, missed the dog, but hit a 10 year old child and they were granted qualified immunity because they couldn't find any facts that matched that case, or whether it's like Baxter versus Bracey out of the Sixth Circuit.
Speaker 1:Hold on, hold on, hold on. You can't jump case to case.
Speaker 2:I'm not jumping, but he said that he doesn't know.
Speaker 2:If we can't get past this, I did not create the doctrine, so reasonableness does not play into the qualified immunity doctrine as it is set up by the Supreme Court. I'm not making this up. It's nothing for me that I can't get past. I know that it doesn't. I know what it is and that is the. It is not whether a constitutional right was violated. It is whether there was a clearly established case law with nearly identical facts, either from the Supreme Court or in the judicial circuit in which this case happens. That is what clearly established means. It's not about going to the reasonable. I believe completely that good police are protected by the reasonable and standard of the Fourth Amendment, which is why only a third of the cases brought against officials, not just police, get to talk about police. But it's way worse than police. It's mayors and other people like that are abusing qualified immunity far more than the police are, in my opinion okay, yeah, all I'm getting at.
Speaker 1:All I'm getting at is when you say a case, don't jump to another case, let him have a chance to oh, I apologize what you said, so we can. We can have it run smooth, because if you keep, I know how you go, you'll go. So uh, von you gotta retort to that first case there.
Speaker 4:But uh well, first we gotta agree on what the qualified immunity standard. It's a two-part test right from the supreme court. Which is the first part is was there a constitutional violation? The second part, if there was, was a constitutional violation. The second part, if there was, was that violation clearly established? So it's a two-part, and so I don't think we can get past that.
Speaker 4:The entire foundation of qualified immunity requires a constitutional violation, or they're going to find that it doesn't apply. It'll be dismissed on other grounds. It's not a 1983 action if there's not a constitutional violation being alleged. And so you're not even going to get this in front of a court to assert a qualified immunity claim if the initial pleadings don't assert a constitutional violation. And so if it's asserting a constitutional violation, which is required to in its pleadings, or it's going to fail for failure to state a claim, right For a 1983 action, specifically, it has to assert a constitutional violation. The constitutional standard, when we're talking about police seizures and use of force, is the Fourth Amendment, and the constitutional standard is reasonableness. And so I just I don't know how else to analyze this, because reasonableness is baked into the test as soon as they, as soon as they mention that there is required a constitutional violation um, understand though, if you say it's two-pronged, and it is two-pronged, and the fact is there have been and we can go through them, they're numeric, we can go through them by volume.
Speaker 2:They have found that, yes, a constitutional, you know right, was, you know could be violated here. But there's no kate like. Okay, I, I want to try and make the the chat, not get upset with everybody. All right, we're going to talk about baxter versus bracy. Okay, I want to show you what qualified immunity is. When we talk about the standard, it's had nothing to do with reasonableness. All right, it's out of the sixth circuit.
Speaker 2:Alexander Baxter was being chased by his police.
Speaker 2:They got him in a basement and he surrendered to them.
Speaker 2:He sat on the ground and put his hands up you know, don't shoot and about 10 seconds after that they deployed the police dog on him and it got him in the armpit and it chewed him up pretty good.
Speaker 2:And it turns out that he found another case in the Sixth Circuit where a gentleman ran from police and surrendered and laid down and laid down, and they set the dog on him and it was found to have violated his constitutional rights, because a reasonable officer would know that a man that surrendered should not be attacked, you know, attacked by a police dog but because in the other case the gentleman had his hands up like this on his knees, surrendering and wasn't laying down. That was the difference of facts that kept it from being clearly established enough for him to move forward, and that's in the Sixth Circuit. That's what I'm talking about. I understand the reasonableness. I'm not saying people don't expect cops to be reasonable, but this idea that the reasonableness standard of the Fourth Amendment somehow is the reason why we have qualified immunity cases against government employees that take 11 years to settle because of interlocutory appeals that that qi gets.
Speaker 1:I mean, I just it's, it's doctrine and it's procedure, that's all, let me make sure I'm hearing you correctly on that case, that you just said. So the reason the qualified immunity wasn't taken away was because there was clearly established law for somebody that was proned out that got bit by a dog, yes, but there wasn't for a person that was kneeling and got bit by a dog, which we both know is the same fucking thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's exactly what happened. The CIS circuit held. They granted qualified immunity to the officer in the Baxter case because in those prior cases the subject was laying down, whereas in this case Baxter was sitting on the ground with his hands up, and that was a different fact scenario, as they said in the case. So the right not to be attacked by a dog once having surrendered wasn't clearly established for a person sitting up and surrendering. That's what I'm saying. That's clearly established everybody. Okay Dang, if I'm wrong, brady, I'm saying that's clearly established everybody.
Speaker 1:Ok, dang, if I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, he just thought how demanding that standard is. All right.
Speaker 4:So this is not I mean, this is not even a large sticking point, because I don't think it's going case and the the constitutional violation that they alleged was excessive use of force under the excessive use of force under the Fourth Amendment, claiming that it was unreasonable. And so that was the foundation. And then the next question that mr Bofill just answered was the court had to wrestle with well, was this violation being alleged? Well, was this violation being alleged, clearly established as a violation? Was the conduct of the officer so obvious and beyond debate that any reasonable officer would have known? You can't do that. This is excessive.
Speaker 2:That's Vaughn, and I'm telling you the problem with these situations. Sir, if I may say and you can go ahead and dig deeper for me, you probably have Westlaw and all that pulled up.
Speaker 2:You can help me out law and all that pulled up, you can help me out, but but in this, in in, what I'm saying to you is that in the case of baxter versus bracy, baxter found a case with damn near the identical set of facts. I'm running from the popos. Oh shit, I'm tired. They gonna get me because eric levine can do his pt and now he's on my ass, mr postman, now once I've surrendered and laid down flat on the ground, 10 seconds later they sick a dog on me.
Speaker 2:That case was deemed that a reasonable officer should know that you should not sick an attack dog on a person who has surrendered. It was found unconstitutional and a violation in the Sixth Circuit. The problem for Baxter was that he was sitting up and surrendered when violation in the Sixth Circuit. The problem for Baxter was that he was sitting up and surrendered when they sick the dog on him. The only difference in that fact scenario was that he was surrendered already with his hands in the air on his knees, as opposed to laying prone and surrendered. So what I'm saying is they looked into it. It is something that in another case had already been proved. A reasonable officer should not do Vaughn. In that same circuit they said hey, you should not sick a dog on a man who's already surrendered to you. That's bad Qualified immunity taken away. So they already look how hard the standard is. You can't even clearly establish within the sixth circuit that being attacked by a police dog after having surrendered is a constitutionally right. I mean, come on, uh, I'll let you have it.
Speaker 5:Brother, I gotta send my drink let me just add two cents on here from a very experienced canine handler with uh, a broken, uh, radius and ulna from training. And yes, it was my dog, his name was Diesel. However, in our policy in reference to our dogs that would engage with a bite, we had instructions and if it was either one of the two situations that you just brought up and our dog was deployed, it was immediate termination. If somebody is listening to commands, I don't care if it's a four hour chase and then they get out on foot and they go, go, go and then they stop and give up and then after that point, if a dog is deployed in the state of Texas, you're going to look at criminal charges because you're using force where force is not justified to that extent.
Speaker 5:So I hate and I didn't know these two cases. So now I've got these written down and I'm going to. You know I'm retired and I'm out of the game, but I want to know for knowledge on more of this. I want to read all the cliff notes that I can, but right now I'm just speaking on the canine side of the deployment of a dog that has the ability to do that. Shame on somebody doing that. Period.
Speaker 5:I've heard some horse people in the country man, and that's absolutely horrible.
Speaker 2:Mr Bannon, what I just want to say to you and I know you're really proud of what you do with those dogs because those dogs are awesome, awesome to work with. I love police dogs in general. They don't violate rights to do what they're told to do. Y'all the ones who violate the rights most of them.
Speaker 6:Not you guys.
Speaker 2:Y'all are motivating. But the problem, banny, isn't whether or not that type of force should have been used in the first place. It's the fact that in the Sixth Circuit we have a case where a police officer was found guilty of violating a man's constitutional rights for using a police attack dog on him after he had surrendered and was prone, and it was established as law. But when a man gets attacked by a police dog after he surrendered more than 10 seconds after, and then they set it on him the case, the facts in that scenario are not enough to clearly establish the right not to be attacked by a police dog if you've surrendered.
Speaker 5:This is what we're dealing with with QI.
Speaker 2:I'm not trying to say that cops don't have to make split second decisions and do a lot of difficult things. I'm simply saying that come on, here we're talking about the standard of the doctrine. That's how hard this standard is. The difference, in fact, scenario was positioned from kneeling to prone, like we were in Marine Corps on a qualifying line.
Speaker 5:Yeah, no, and it pisses me off to no end and I'm trying to keep my cool, calm and collectiveness. But a dog handler that goes through the amount of training that I went through, that would go through something as big as this. I mean, that animal was a weapon. When that animal is it less lethal? I would say 85%. Yes, okay, if the dog is properly trained. But when somebody gives up like this and a dog with that type of ability gets released, I understand the pounds per square inch. What can happen to a person, everything, and for them to do that, I believe that's a criminal act and that's again my opinion.
Speaker 2:For what it's worth, you better hope that you've made it to your stomach after you've surrendered, because if not, and that dog rips your testicles off, you didn't have a clearly established right to not have that castration happen.
Speaker 5:And in that specific case and thank God we're in America, I can have my opinion on it. That is, criminal charges for the officer. If it in fact is exactly laid out as that, if somebody gave up, the threat is over and then a dog is deployed and an engagement happens. I'm sorry, but that officer is going to spend some time in jail and probably go to prison.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what happened in Baxter versus Bracey. It was established that he had surrendered. All those facts were he had been surrendered, everybody knew it. The man had released the dog afterwards. That was not the reason why the qualified immunity was granted. The qualified immunity was granted in that regard because the facts scenario did not make it clearly established. It was not established enough. They hadn't decided the position standing, kneeling, prone, yawning, dog, whichever positions your body's allowed to be in for the cops not to have a dog attack you when you surrendered. They hadn't been clearly established yet.
Speaker 2:And this is what I was trying to bring up just as we frame this as we start. I'm not here to talk about bashing police officers. It's the municipal people and the other things that are abusing qualified. I got the stats from there's shout out to Institute for Justice. They do great work. They had a study that came out last year called Unaccountable that followed all seven over 7 7,000, all the qualified immunity appellate cases in America from 2010 to 2020. And they got all the numbers on qualified immunity. So we can have passionate discourse back and forth, but I think now, as people who are bridging the gap and not trying to let emotions run too high. We have facts and numbers now that we can dig into and see if qualified immunity is doing what the supporters, like some of you gentlemen, would purport that it does. So I'll give it back to Eric or Vaughn or whoever. I'm sorry I get this way, y'all. I got that tism. I was on Ritalin as a child, but I got rid of it.
Speaker 4:I got it, eric. I think we got to go back to how qualified immunity cases are pled. That'll lead us up to why we're at this point for the discussion. Because when, when a plaintiff alleges a violation, right, they allege the constitutional violation of excessive use of force. Uh, they say it was clearly established. And then they make a factual assertion. Depending on whether they're doing it at at the uh, at the motion to dismiss stage, or they're doing it at a summary judgment stage, the facts are just whatever they put on paper, right, they haven't been tested. There's no adversarial process. They just get to put whatever they want down there and the judge is required to assume the facts as pled or true at the pleading stage. So for a motion to dismiss, pled or true at the, at the at the pleading stage, so for a motion to dismiss. And at the summary judgment stage they don't have to allege I mean they unless they're clearly contradicted by video evidence or or other witnesses. Then they're going to give the factual basis to the plaintiff and they're going to interpret those facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.
Speaker 4:Okay, if you look at the baxter case and the, what was the other case of Bracey back. Oh, campbell, sorry, campbell and Baxter, um understand, when you're asking a qualified immunity question and this is critical nobody's tested these facts. The plaintiff has just said these are the facts. The judge, the court looks at it and goes okay, if these are the facts. On these facts, facts, if we interpret them in a light most favorable to the plaintiff, then because the it's called the non-moving party right, is there a constitutional violation? And if there is, would it have been clearly, would it have been obvious to the officers, would have been clearly established and obvious to the officers that there was a constitutional violation. On the facts Overwhelmingly, those facts look nothing like the reality of the event. Overwhelmingly, those facts are not tested by experts, they're not tested by video, they're not tested by adversarial cross-examination. They're just facts alleged by planners. Some are pretty close, other ones are way outside, just to get through the courthouse doors. And so they'll allege all sorts of intentional misconduct, they'll allege all sorts of egregious conduct by the police, just so they can get the case in front of the court, and then the court has to interpret it in their favor.
Speaker 4:In that case, the two distinguishing points we said it was obvious in Baxter that he was surrendering so that the officer should have been on notice. I don't know anything about those cases other than when I'm quickly trying to play catch up here, but the court did distinguish those two cases on the facts and so the court found not the officers, but the court found and this may be mr billfold's whole point is that it's a court. The court is the problem, not the police right? The court found that these cases were different enough that the first case did not provide clearly established guidance to the officers Because in that case they were making at least according to them, the court. They were making tactical decisions in one case that were clear and unambiguous, and the other case they were potentially unclear visibility, ambiguous circumstances relative to the continuing threat, ambiguous circumstances relative to the continuing threat.
Speaker 4:The second one was the officers claimed that the dispute wasn't or that the surrender was not unambiguous.
Speaker 4:Where one it was, clearly he had surrendered. You can't put a dog on someone who's clearly surrendered. In the other, the court found that it wasn't clear that he had surrendered or that they didn't have a legitimate tactical purpose for releasing the dog. Ultimately, the court never got into the facts to decide whether they did or didn't. So it might be the case that they were 100% wrong. That might be the case. It might be the case that it was tactical uncertainty and ambiguity and they were making discretionary decisions based on the speed of those decisions and the court. And that's what qualified immunity is designed to protect. And so I think everyone looking at qualified immunity has to understand also the first case where there's qualified immunity doesn't provide much precedential value to a second case if the court finds a distinction in the facts themselves, not just the law. So I think I mean that's where that case got divided. And every case where the court says there's inadequate precedence, there's inadequate notice, it's because they've made a factual distinction, uh, between those two cases.
Speaker 2:Okay, eric, I just want to jump in and say you know, man, you know I appreciate bond being here. I appreciate matt's chat for being here. I know, know we're all passionate. I'm trying to keep it really 100.
Speaker 2:What everything Vaughn just said to me, whether he knows it or not, speaks against why good cops don't need qualified immunity. Because out of all the 1983 cases that are brought, only a third assert qualified immunity, so 66% don't even do it. Why? Because you got body cams that say, hey, this guy's full of shit. This cop did nothing wrong. That use of force was a. Okay, I support it. I think that he went easy on this guy. That guy had a knife out trying to stab people. You know I might've smashed his face. That cop did great. All that can happen, okay. Um, it's only a third of the those 1983 cases is QI asserted. It's only a third of those 1983 cases is QI asserted. It's the worst cases of the worst, where they say, yeah, this looks pretty bad. Well, but it's not clearly established yet. So you know the facts. Because the facts that he's talking about, von says he's not sure of them. I've read through the case stuff. This has been on the radar for many years, and a lot of the folks out here in the chat are up on that one as well.
Speaker 2:But that was the difference in the specific facts of the case was the positioning kneeling versus prone, and they had already been surrendered. They were going to be advancing on the general. It was not even like, oh, what's he doing? Oh, it wasn't that. That's already been hashed out. But just the issue here is, like he said, the interlocutory appeal. That's an advantage that QI gets. Say it's like he said at the motion to dismiss, stage right, and say, which is a fifth of all interlocutory appeals, okay, but the motions to dismiss are supposed to be hard for the government to win. You know they're intended to week out the, just weed out the weak cases of bs. Now, normally like if a district court judge, you know, sees a case that's strong enough and he goes uh no, you know, this is obviously a rights violation, your qualified immunity is not granted he immediately at that point gets an interlocutory appeal with like a three judge panel and try to extend this thing out. The studies that are out there show that it's usually like 23 months longer I believe these QI cases take to work themselves out. Um, but I'm going to give a quick example just so we can take it out of the cop sphere, because I want I don't want this to be about use of force and everything is bonds. The expert in that and he know, I know what I know, he knows what he knows.
Speaker 2:But let's talk about qualified immunity in a different way. That's not police. I want to show you what I mean by being a failed. Okay, mathis versus the County of Lyon. You had a family who had a local County official, stole some money, did some malfeasance and stole a bunch of property from their family. Right, the case was started in 2017 and the final judgment was entered in 2019 because of qualified immunity that they did multiple times within the same lawsuit. Literally, if you want, I can send that to Devon to look at.
Speaker 2:But the first partial pleadings were filed in 2007, may 14th, and then the court said no, you get no immunity, you're a scumbag. Okay, well then the Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of qualified immunity in a 2-1 decision, which is kind of scary, because one of these folks actually voted to give the guy qualified immunity, but the other two said, no, no, that's not it. So then it went back up 2013,. Back to the Ninth Circuit, a court of appeals on qualified immunity again, and this family finally got their thing, 12 years later. So let's take it out of this. Hey, we're headhunting cops. I'm trying to show you that as a judicial doctrine, it's a joke. All it does is cause the system to get bogged up more because of these appeal. They get to bite from the apple as many times as they want to. If they're the police, ok, you try to get it at the motion to dismiss because you got this case. Hey, dismiss qualified immunity. Nope, we're doing good. And the judge goes no officer, this was really bad. That's not what's going to happen here. You have enough. It's going forward. It gets past the motion. He immediately gets the appeal. It doesn't even get to get to a court.
Speaker 2:Qualified immunity keeps us from having the jurisprudence and clearly established law that you guys swear that you want to see, eric, you want to see some law, some word. Remember when the Supreme Court came down against a moment of threat and you were a little bothered that there was no. They didn't say anything about exigency and creating your own exigency as an officer, like that officer did, and I was telling you they're not going to that has to go down at the circuit. You understand that's what they're trying not to say anything because it has to go on down there, because it's a hot mess. You understand what I'm saying? It's a hot mess the way that this situation plays out.
Speaker 2:We cannot get any clearly established law because it's not getting to a jury. If you were an officer who did nothing wrong and you feel like you have the evidence to back that up and they're bringing this case against you, let's get in front of a jury and prove that you're full of shit. Let's handle it. It doesn't get to juries. We don't get case law. We don't get it because it's been dismissed. At how many different stages along the way that case matth Mathis versus County of Lyon Vaughn you can jump all over that one, 12 years. They robbed a county official because only out of all the qualified immunity cases that were filed between 2010 and 2020, it was only, I think, 23% were First Amendment stuff, which is its own interesting data set that you can jump into with that, but it wasn't a lot of police.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was the other government actors.
Speaker 4:Hold on, let's see, vaughn, you got anything to retort on that if one of the goals of qualified immunity is to prevent officers from even having to go to trial and to avoid the inconvenience of discovery and trial and defending themselves against discretionary immunity, then qualified immunity is failing in that regard. What he's talking about typically is if you go to a motion to dismiss a normative case and you lose, it goes to the merits, right, and then you can file a motion to summary judgment. But it goes to the merits. There's a case for qualified immunity that says if you lose, even at the motion to dismiss stage, you can file an interlocutory appeal. You can appeal that decision or you can let it go to. Oftentimes you don't have enough facts because, again, at the initial pleading that I mean you see this all the time the facts on that paper at the initial pleading that I mean you see this all the time the facts on that paper at the initial pleading that the court looks at will almost never look like the reality of what happened in the event, and so it doesn't really give you much precedential value, because when the case is matured through cross-examination and additional discovery, you start to have to piece out some of the more egregious things that were claimed in that case and you'll see this quite a bit. But that's just the pleadings. By the time it gets to motion, the pleadings are accepted and you get through more discovery and you get through more. You know things like depositions. You get more witness statements, you get video analysis. You get expert witnesses to come in and look at it. Then you have more facts. You've sort of fleshed out the facts and they look, they've crystallized a little bit more like what may have happened. However, there's still a lot of disagreement at that point between what the officers are going to say happened and what the plaintiff is going to say happened at at the motion is for summary judgment. If you file a qualified immunity at the motion for summary judgment and you lose Mr Billful Dray, you could just file an interlocutory appeal and you can file an appeal for that. Depending on whether it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court, you can file these appeals and this point's well taken. It may not get that high, but they don't take very many of them, that's for sure right, and so I think less than 50 might be right. But the point is when, when you look at these and and people are upset about the origin, about the case itself. And we see this.
Speaker 4:The media exposure, the pleadings themselves will allege horrific facts and the attorneys know that those facts are not what actually happened. But the public doesn't know that and the media will fan the flames and they will allege intentional, gross negligence. They will, they will allege things that are absolutely nowhere near the reality of what actually occurred, and so the police are kind of stuck going. Well, now we have to go to more discovery.
Speaker 4:If we don't get the qualified immunity at the motion to dismiss, we got to go to qual. We got to do more discovery, get more facts alleged so that we can take these new facts to the next, next phase of the litigation. And even there, if you can't agree on the material facts, then qualified immunity. That's often one of the biggest ways qualified immunity gets pierced right Is because they say look, based on what you're saying, there's no constitutional violation, police officers, but based on what they're saying there's no constitutional violation, police officers, but based on what they're saying there is, and that a determination of fact is for the jury. So the judge will say if and they remember they have to read the facts in a light most favorable to the plaintiff at that state.
Speaker 2:Yes, qualified immunity is the only defense that the plaintiff has to disprove. Yeah, that's, yeah, you let. You laid it right out there. I mean, I love and respect you, vaughn, but I know the chat has to have their ass itching, because mine is right now. Listen what you're saying about the discoveries in this.
Speaker 2:Let's only a third of the 1983 civil rights violation cases brought against police assert qualified immunity. Why? Because most cops are pretty goddamn good people trying to do the best they can in shitty places, from small towns to big cities. All right, that's what I truly believe. But let us not fool ourselves. But let us not fool ourselves that 33% the reason they have to use QI is because they don't have all those things that are already set up to protect you, good officers. It gets past reasonableness. They go holy shit, look at this and it gets past it and it gets to a point where they just assert QI like brick in the wall. Brick in the wall, brick in the wall. Let's have the cases. Who cares how long it takes for discovery? The government has all the money. You have all the money.
Speaker 2:So when it comes to asserting a claim that basically lets people whose rights get violated not even get to redress that it doesn't get there. No, we're not going to let a jury of your peers we don't care about letting them judge the reasonableness, we don't care. There's no case that says that you were standing on one leg when that cop shot you in your testicles. You weren't, and the other. The only right was for a man standing there with both feet on the ground to be shot in the testicles and and it's a it's a violation. So because you had one leg in the air when you were shot in the testicles, it's no clearly established law. This is the ridiculous standard of QI that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Good cops are already protected by the reasonableness standard of the Fourth Amendment, or else qualified immunity would be called in all cases, because you don't need to use it in most cases, because a lot of people are full of shit and hate police, so they come up with some bullshit. It easily falls apart and doesn't have to go anywhere. You don't have discovery. It's only that third, where the officer did some shitty poo-poo shit and oh, we can't defend this. Qi, qi, y'all qi, till the wheels fall off. That's what we're getting. I just showed you that it's just a way to make things last longer.
Speaker 1:Hold on. So if I'm hearing this correctly and I want to get Vaughn's opinion on this Mr Billfold's basically saying that qualified immunity isn't even needed because of the reasonableness standard and in all these egregious cases where cops do some really stupid, stupid shit, they're not going to fall under that reasonable standard, so they don't need the QI to begin with. Is that fair?
Speaker 4:Yeah, but it's, I think it's.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just the numbers?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it. I think there's some assumptions being made and I don't know how to. I mean, I'm going to keep. I'm going to keep saying the same thing again, because if it's that one third of cases that are the most egregious, remember they're not the most egregious conduct by the police, they're the most egregious allegations by the plaintiff, which may look nothing like the actual conduct. Certainly, some of them do right, we all know bad policing. But when you talk about these numbers, I actually would have thought it was worse than that, that even less cases were asserted. But it depends.
Speaker 4:I tried to look up different research and what I found was some of the research is showing a high level of these cases are blocking and the other ones are showing very little of them are blocked and right now it just depends on what the metrics are for determining which case got blocked on QI. The point is that fact that allegation of the worst one that has never been determined at that stage it's just a pleading. So at the qi stage there is no constitutional violation being proven, nor that we can say was, was a, was a conducted in this case. And I don't. I don't agree with the, with the premise that, just because someone asserts qualified immunity, uh, that's because they know they don't have another defense because of the way qualified immunity cases are pled Right. So that's the first thing. The other thing is the allegation that, yeah, there's just a premise there that that one-third of cases is conduct by the police. That was so bad they had to assert qualified immunity. May I pause Vaughn Vaughn, vaughn.
Speaker 2:I hate to be that guy, but you know what you and I. I respect you and I'm not a professional like that, so I'm just going to get in there. I am not asserting and if I said so it's because in the interest of brevity and economy of words, and I apologize, brevity and economy of words and I apologize I'm not saying that out of that third of 1983 cases that they do assert qualified immunity. I'm not saying all 33% of those are egregious. I'm saying in that 33% is where you find all of these egregious cases that have all of you guys standing there going what the hell is happening here? That's all I meant to say. I will not say that all 33 are. I'm saying that all of the cases that stagger the public, the good people in this chat, those of us on the other side, I'm not on the other side of the gap, I'm stuck in the middle and that's where I stay because that's how I'll let people walk on my back to get to the other side. You know, nobody wants to have these uncomfortable conversations, but I'm going to have them because a lot of people in Matt's chat that say abolish QI, they don't know what the hell they're talking about either when I engage with them over in that channel, because they think that abolishing QI is going to somehow stop cops from abusing you. And it's not 99, and if you wanted to look at where some of these numbers are, Vaughn, check out.
Speaker 2:Unaccountable from Institute for Justice in 2024. It had all of the qualified immunity appellate cases between 2010 and 2020, the over 7,000 of them. It breaks it down into minute detail and we can count these numbers out, because you'd be surprised, you guys are being used to be the pawns. The people who want qualified immunity are those real bad actors that are screwing you guys over in the buildings that you work for. Okay, it's not you guys on the street. That's not where a lot of the most egregious stuff comes from, and uh, but that's where you can go for your numbers. But if you wanted to go to the Northwestern university law review, uh, Schwartz has those numbers on the qualified immunity cases. If you want to go, look through that Vaughn and and that's it's. It's been picked up by Yale law review and a couple other ones, but I believe Northwestern was the first place I had found a recent updated some of that.
Speaker 4:I read the Yale summary of it, but I would also I mean, I think the other side is gonna the other question that comes from that one-third is how many of those are the most egregiously pled cases that the officers are like I don't even know what to say to this. It's so ridiculous that I can't. I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 2:None of this actually happened then let's get in front of a jury so they can say this is, and exonerate that officer. We can go about our business instead of tying it up for years and years and years with QI.
Speaker 6:That's what we do.
Speaker 2:Let's get in front of a jury. We're just I'm. I hear that you're trying to defend its existence. But let's get right to it. You know, when eight, when it was when Section 1983 was come up with, it was after reconstruction, right, ok, and that like, and there was no. The word clearly established is not in the law. We don't need Congress to fix QI because QI isn't a thing that exists. The judicial, the Supreme Court, made it up out of whole cloth, like the emperor's clothes, like here we give this to you. It's called the doctrine of QI, but it's not a thing that exists. So if you just enforce 1983 the way it's written by Congress, we'd be good.
Speaker 2:But a lot of people don't bring up in this 1899, the civil rights cases of 1899. The Supreme Court ruled that civil rights violations were a state's rights issue, not a federal issue. So between 1899 and the Civil Rights Act of 1965, we didn't have any way to make clearly established law because the Supreme Court said, hey, civil rights violations, that's not to do with us, that's states' rights. And we got Jim Crow out of that. Thanks, supreme Court. Okay, so fast forward to 1965, we get the Civil Rights Act and everything rocking. Well, hell, we don't make it two years until 1967, pearson versus Ray we create qualified immunity in the.
Speaker 2:At this point, before they came up with clearly established, we had about 18 or so years of good faith. Good faith that's what we had. So between 1871 and 1899, all of those civil rights violations going on in the south. In 1899 the supreme court said there ain't no such thing as a civil rights case. Bye. So there's no clearly established law for that part of our American history. And then it's not until 1965 we get a Civil Rights Act that will allow these things to be enforceable at a federal level. And we don't get two years into it before they come up with a way to make sure that government officials don't even get a case in front of a jury to say, ok, yeah, you did great or oh no, you were horrible and you're guilty of this or this happened. We don't even get to get clearly established law. When have we been making the clearly established law If we had no civil rights law between 1871, when the 1983 was created, and 1964.
Speaker 2:So we had two years to clearly establish law with a set of facts. So if I go beat somebody to death with us if I drop a cell phone from on top of building, hit somebody in the head and kill them? No, I didn't kill him. Hey, that there was. No. This statute was written. It's enough about a cell phone. Yeah, that was. That's the ridiculous standard we give cops for this. Give me exact, specific facts. That's the ridiculous standard. We give cops for this. Give me exact, specific facts. That's the problem with qi. That's the problem with how this goes. We do not get these things to trial, to establish any kind of law okay no, I think that's.
Speaker 4:That is exactly the point of qi is to avoid going to trial, right, and that that's a policy discussion. Yeah, well, that's the policy. That's the policy conversation that took place, right? Was they wanted to have a balance between accountability and the reality of making split second decisions, right?
Speaker 2:Hold on a second. Let me say something right now, because I know we're going to get off of it. I'll put it to you this way Out of all the qualified immunity cases that they studied between 2010 and 2020, right, and we're talking about this Institute for Justice study they had let me get my numbers right so I don't lie to everybody in front of it One-fifth, fully one-fifth, or almost 20% of those assertions were completely divorced of any involvement with police or correctional officers, and just under one in five, so a little less than 20 percent of QI cases that came up in that 10 year period were First Amendment cases. If you dig into the data, you will see that 50 percent of the First Amendment cases brought up under 1983, between 2010 and 2020, were alleged premeditation. Okay, and when I say alleged premeditation, not spur of the moment, oh, the officer's got to make a decision at split second Life or death, guys, life or death. No, we're talking about, like East Cleveland Ohio, william Fambro had a sound truck. He did like Long Island Audit did when he got himself a LED truck that he could go protest the police, commissioner, and the people that were going after him. Well, william Fambro, east Cleveland Ohio, gets a sound truck, the local mayor and he was running against the local mayor. The truck was parked, they said she sent the police to go and take away and impound his sound truck. That was not a split second decision made in the heat of whatever, and we need to give these officers and public officials the ability to do that. This is a tool to misuse the judicial system.
Speaker 2:We're not talking about second guessing the heroes, for God's sakes. We're talking about the doctrine of QI and how legally it is screwing the pooch. We need clearly established law, vaughn. We shouldn't have a case like Baxter versus Bracey where a man has to have. It's not clearly established enough that a man was laying down surrendered. They said, yes, that's a constitutional rights violation. The man had surrendered. The only difference in facts and if this is a debate we can have it another time, but I'm telling you I wouldn't lie to you, as my papa used to say, I wouldn't you, just to get you okay the only difference in the facts was that one man was kneeling and one man is prone. That's qiI, not this. Well, you know in the heat of the circumstances, and I understand the Rehnquist court and how you cannot judge it in hindsight, I know all of the things that the Supreme Court has said about QI over all the years, but I really don't give a shit because, at the end of the day, we don't need to abolish QI per se. We need to stop letting the Supreme Court decide to make up a doctrine that has nothing to do with the original language.
Speaker 2:Eric, I know you're on the side over there. Pull up the statute, pull up 1983 and show me where it says clearly established. That study that I gave you all earlier. While Eric's pulling that up and I'm sorry to take over, but this might be my only shot you see these pretty guys all the time. Now listen, 99.98% of all cases that are denied qualified immunity, those officers and those individuals and state actors are municipally indemnified and they pay nothing. You can name more. You, as police officer I see four of them on my screen, more of y'all can name officers who've lost their homes or their marriages Due to some bullshit with their department playing games with them when they didn't do anything wrong and nobody looked out for him. Then you can name a cop who ever lost a dime to a qualified immunity claim. Vaughn, you know more cops than I were worldwide. If do you know any police officers who've ever been financially liable under a 1983 claim and never lost in a qualified mean, you had to pay out of pocket no, not the, not the federal.
Speaker 4:If they had qualified immunity?
Speaker 2:no, yeah, exactly this is what there was punitive damages, but I don't know, I don't know in that if you go back and look at Schwartz's Paper that was released in Northwestern Yale, all of them 90 the the different studies argue. So there's some room for wiggle. It's either. The first ones I heard were ninety nine point nine five and the other was ninety nine point Nine eight. So between a point five and a point two, you know, come on, guys. There's never been a cop lose anything. You are scaring these young cops who want to be saying oh, if you get rid of qualified immunity, nobody's going to want to be a cop. Bullshit, bullshit. It has nothing to do with it because you can look into the data. It's 2025 now. We have all this data. The Institute for Justice compiled all that.
Speaker 2:I suggest, vaughn and everybody on the panel and everybody watching this, y'all go learn this. Stop just jumping in matt's chat. Going. Abolish qi, all pigs and tyrants. Man, get your knowledge together and change some police hearts. That's the only way. I'm not on this show because I'm a superstar. I'm on this show because I've been digging in eric's ear for months six, seven months trying to talk to him about this, and he keeps saying save it for a show. So here we are I saved it for your show, eric.
Speaker 1:Well, here it is. I got it pulled up. I hope this is what you were looking for.
Speaker 2:Hey man, if you like it, I love it.
Speaker 1:It says every person who is under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage of any state or territory or the district of Columbia subjects, are or causes to be subjected any citizen of the United States or other persons within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges or immunities secured by the constitution and laws shall be liable to the partyvation of any rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws shall be liable to the party injured in an action lawsuit. Is this the right one?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's the right one. There's a warning that was taken out before these codes were put together. They weren't in, like you know, 42 USC, it was just a bunch of random stuff. So some letters, uh, some sentences got taken out of the original text, but that's pretty much what it's been the whole time. Yeah, I'm going to grab a drink, guys, I'll be right back. Apologize Y'all, do not give my bear any unwanted. This is all mine.
Speaker 1:You're good, uh good. Now we've got an opportunity to breathe for a second here. Uh, Matt, you've got strong feelings towards uh qualified immunity as a cop and vaughn, I don't vaughn. Have you met matt yet?
Speaker 4:no, this is the first time I've seen him on your uh advertisements, I think, and some of your screenshots okay.
Speaker 1:Well, matt is a cop up in illinois. Um, we won't say specifically where, um, but he's a cop up in illinois. How long you been a cop now, matt? 21 years, 21 years and um, matt is very outspoken. Uh, which is probably one of the things that helped put him on the map is, uh, against qualified immunity. Now I fully admit when I, because of my ignorance and not knowing qualified immunity, that well, um, I just had a generic understanding of it, like we were taught in the academy oh, it's there, you know, in case you were trying to do the right thing but you fucked up and then somebody tries to sue you or whatever that was my basic understanding of it had no clue that anybody that had lost their qualified immunity like less than a percent, have ever gone through Less than half of a percent Less than half of a percent, let's percent have ever gone.
Speaker 1:Less than half of a percent, less than half of a percent, uh, but yeah, have gone all the way through and actually taken a hit on it. Um, but uh, matt is uh matt. Why don't you go ahead and give your stance, buddy?
Speaker 3:I just, I just I agree with pretty much what mr billfold is saying. I've seen it. Um, the the dog case is one of the main ones. That's the top one that gets talked about a lot and it's not justice to me. Yeah, and if the standard is the Fourth Amendment, then why are we messing with that? I've never understood it. I've seen it emboldened officers it's almost like I picture a guy walking in and he brave in in a bar because he's got his big brother behind him. Um, that's how I see officers. I've I've seen them. They get brave and they, they, they. Their attitudes is I can do what I want because I just got this qi, I can hide behind it and it's uh, all the cases, it's, it's mucked up and and what mr both, what mr bill for was saying earlier about the premeditation? Uh, these aren't, these aren't all split second, uh, decisions. I see blatant that's what I call out all the time on social media. I see blatant violations and they don't care and there was the.
Speaker 1:there was the video that we watched on here together. I think you were on that one man, I'm not a hundred percent sure maybe you covered it, but remember there was like a semi truck on the freeway and they had the canine out and you can see the guy like yeah, he gave up. He's like please don't let that dog. You can hear him. Yeah, please don't let the dog go. I'm giving up.
Speaker 1:And they let the dog go, like to me Vaughn, like a case like that, like how does something get drawn out Like as long as some of these cases he's talking about, like even on your side of the house? Do you agree that that is? Do you agree that that's a problem with the system? That they can just keep drawing this shit out that long to where nothing ever comes of it, when it's clear, when you see it in a video and you got it, you can hear and you see all of this stuff. And let's say that people in the, in the, in the courts, are like yep, that was unconstitutional, you violated his rights, shouldn't let that dog go, but you did anyway, like, and they lose qi, like the ability to, or they don't lose it, they just get to keep drawing out these cases like do you guys hear a cat? Sorry, I heard a cat.
Speaker 2:Hey, I have cats out there fighting.
Speaker 1:Yep, there they go. Okay, it wasn't just me, sorry, mon.
Speaker 2:I love my babies.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, no, obviously, qi doesn't protect any use of force. That's obviously excessive.
Speaker 1:It's not designed for that Right, but that's what I'm saying. The problem is it never goes anywhere. Why doesn't it go?
Speaker 2:That's the point. I love Vaughn, but holy, we all have to see, guys, we don't get the clearly established law. We don't get it Out of all, only 23% of all the qualified immunity cases that they studied, of over 7,000, were police use of force. It's a small number of an even smaller number of instances. This is not widespread. We are having people hating on cops like hell over here because we can't get you guys to understand that QI is screwing you. You guys are the guys riding the damn donkey out here. Oh, if they get rid of QI, nobody would want to be a police officer, even though less than one half of 1% of any cop who's ever been stripped of his QI and found liable has ever paid a dime because of municipal indemnification. But you guys are fighting the fight for QI when y'all are only 23% of the QI cases that were in this largest data set that they could get, which was all of the QI appellate cases between 2020, I mean 2010 and 2020.
Speaker 3:Okay, I can agree right there. What he just said if I can step in for a second, it is it is fear mongering. I've heard that since getting I'm beginning my career, you need this. If you only don't have this everything, you'll get sued every week and it's a lot of fear mongering. And what Mr Biffle says is is the exact opposite of that and it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1:Okay, Vaughn, what do you got to say to that buddy?
Speaker 4:Well, I want to back up a half a second and I'll just make this point. It's not just the tense, uncertain, rapidly evolving circumstances that QI applies to. So, to Mr Bill Fold's point, not all these cases have to do with quick decisions, it's discretionary functions. It's where officers are engaged in discretionary functions as to the threat. Discretionary functions as to the response to the threat. Discretionary function as to reasonable suspicion for a stop. Discretionary function, I mean they're just having remember. There's uncertainty, unpredictability, little information and time sensitive decisions being made. And it's not just police right. We give immunity to judges who have years to decide cases. We give immunity to prosecutors who have years to decide charging decisions. The whole purpose of qualified immunity is to protect officers' discretionary functions, not just split-second judgments Right.
Speaker 2:This is where I need to jump in.
Speaker 1:Holy Christ, eric, you're going to have to block me out for a minute to uh, I'm gonna move your fucking mic. Old man, you better but what?
Speaker 2:these things that they purport are not what they do. And now we have the numbers to have the honest discussion. It does not. If you go and look at that study, because it's all of the cases out there it makes it 20 on average. Uh, 23 percent longer, I believe it. I have to go pull up all of it's. Literally what qi does is extends out how long these cases take to get through. It does the exact opposite.
Speaker 2:You think that it come on, let's take the excessive force cop thing out, but I'm trying to. Let's not send this back to hey, because because what Vaughn's saying basically get into the cop world. Or people who are friendly to that is saying hey, man, this protects those guys that are walking the razor's edge. They're out there on the bleeding knife of justice to stop and protect you through the night, and that's what that says. But OK, that's not who's using it. That is not who's using QI. That is not what is happening. Ok, that is not how's using QI. That is not what is happening. Okay, that is not how the that is the QI. Okay, think about this. He keeps talking about all these.
Speaker 2:Let a judge decide, let a jury decide. If it's, if he had to make that decision, let me be on the panel. I want to hear Banning tell me that this man tried to stab him and he pulled his, and even though he didn't know if he got the knife away, so he drew down and shot I'll. I want to hear what banning did. Let me see the evidence. Isn't this justice? Is this not america? Or do we have these doctrines that just let people go? Oh well, he was leaning six inches to the left when that cop ran over his foot and broke his leg, and the last time a cop did that, the guy was six inches to the right. These facts are not clearly established. Qualified immunity Good day, let's go to the country club. And this is what we get. I'm not even trying to be funny, but it is not about these split. If it's a split-second decision, vaughn, then stand on it. I'm a man. I've been in court and stood on my bullshit.
Speaker 4:Okay, court and stood on my bullshit. Okay, I don't have 17 appeals in between. Yes, I actually made just the opposite point. I was agreeing with you, mr bill ford. It's not split second decisions that are covered by qa qi only it's it's any discretionary function.
Speaker 2:So when the police are doing surveillance and making the ultimate discretionary function is a jury in this case, vaughn, and we are tired of no cases getting to a jury. I love you, vaughn, but listen the case. We're not getting clearly established law because we cannot get to a jury. All these things you're saying sound like a lot. That's the reason why we have juries in it. So why can't we get these facts in front of one, vaughn? Let's get it in there. Why can't we get these facts in front of one bond? Huh, let's get it in there.
Speaker 2:Obviously, you cannot argue from the state point of view that QI helps stop that. When I just quoted that case to you out of Nevada, where do I have to go back and find it? Where it was 12 years. Yeah, mathis versus the County of Lyon. 12 years because the government official hit up a qualified immunity appeal so many times that it took 12 years. This is what we're talking about. Get it in front of a jury, vaughn, and I'll exonerate that good cop or I will bury the bad one or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:But let's get these things in front of a jury instead of having no way to clearly establish law. Oh, qi, why? What QI? Because that two prong you talked about earlier, even if it does violate, because it did violate, but not in the exact. The cop couldn't have known because there wasn't those exact facts. So what? The sixth circuit was saying that, yes, before we found that a cop should know that a dog attacking a surrendered man laying on his face is unconstitutional. But in that same sixth circuit, well, god bless, that poor officer did not have a fucking clue that setting his dog on, uh, a person who's kneeling and surrendered was somehow unconstitutional. There's your qi bond. There it is. That's how you practice. That's what we have cases to look at. We have numbers now and we can break them down later when y'all want, all right mr billfold, I'm gonna let vaughn speak.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna mute your shit mute me.
Speaker 2:Mute me for real. I'm gonna see what my cat's doing over in this corner all right, vaughn, sir, your chance to retort yeah, these are.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he's going right to the heart of policy judgments right and effectiveness judgments. If one of the policies was to save officers money, his point is it's not really working because officers aren't losing money. The problem is what happens when you lift QI, and this goes to the rationale of why they applied in the first place. This is not me making the argument for or against it. I'm just understanding the rationale for QI in the first place. This is not me making the argument for or against it. I'm just understanding the rationale for QI in the first place. Understanding it was if you lift it, how many discretionary decisions do the police make every single day? And I want you to imagine every single person you arrest, every single person you stop for a traffic stop gets to file a petition to the court that you violated their fourth amendment rights. There's no QI. Every one of those cases is now going to go to a jury to decide that this officer didn't violate your rights, even in the most clearly clear cases. Forget the clear ones, the close cases, which is where a probable cause determination, a threat assessment, stopping somebody for a Terry stop Cause remember those are just reasonable suspicion. That's the Fourth Amendment standard Every single time they decide they don't like what you did, which is every time. Adults don't like to be stopped and told what to do. They can sue you and you have no way to prevent going through the lawsuit. So one it's not going to be a very fast process when you start stacking up all those cases. This is the same rationale that goes for why we have settlements, why we have plea deals. That you will absolutely overrun the courts is the rationale behind why there's QI. It is the rationale why there's settlements, why there's plea deals.
Speaker 4:So if you lift QI and allow every single person who does not understand why the police did what they did in some cases they just don't know the law, they don't know the facts the officers had. They don't understand that the standard for reasonable suspicion means you're going to stop a lot of innocent people. Legally Probable cause means you're going to arrest a lot of innocent people. Legally it means you're going to use force on people that ultimately, after the investigation, we find was not necessary or was, but at the time, based on what the officers, the information they had, was reasonable because it's a probable cause standard. If you raise QI, every one of these judgment calls is now a potential litigation. The courts just said we're not doing that, we're not exposing every discretionary decision, whether it was fast or slow, to potential litigation. No one would sign up for that job, not just the ones who are corrupt, but the ones who are trying to do it correctly, which is, by the way, just a Terry.
Speaker 4:Stop a reasonable suspicion, stop Just doing a basic investigation would subject you to a lawsuit because there's no qualified immunity. Investigation would subject you to a lawsuit because there's no qualified immunity, and then we would be relying on plaintiff's attorneys and the ethics of a plaintiff's attorney to not bring frivolous lawsuits. Now, how is that working out right now, where we have a massive amount of these pleadings that look nothing like the reality of the event? Right, the point is to get to clearly establish right, there has to be an obvious use of force violation or an obvious constitutional violation. I'll stay away from use of force there has to be an obvious constitutional violation and that the facts have to have been played out that the next officer can say, from a notice standpoint right, this is a due process issue. Officers have to be on notice for honest accountability. They have to be able to predict the lawfulness of their own behavior, right. This is plain due process, and we cannot expect things of police officers that are beyond human performance capabilities. That's another. The legal standard is impossibility, right. So you have a due process requirement and you have an impossibility defense.
Speaker 4:Qualified immunity is not a defense. Qualified immunity prevents you having to put forward a defense. It is immunity. Qualified immunity is not a defense. Qualified immunity prevents you having to put forward a defense. It is immunity. It prevents you from having to even entertain the litigation side of it, and there's a due process for that right, and we've been talking about that. You make a pleading, there's a responsive pleading. It goes before a court who decides on its face. Have you alleged a constitutional violation that any officer would have known about? And then you get to move to the next step or you appeal it, which is his point. And so that's this one policy argument for why QI is working. To say, if you did your job right, let a jury tell you you did it right, would flood the system and nobody I don't think anybody really would take that job right, because it's not about corruption. It's about the fact that the constitutional standard is one of educated judgments and discretion at every single stage. And so how many times have you arrested someone and you're like, okay, now that we got more information, this wasn't the right guy and he wants to sue you. And not only this how your agency responds to you being sued matters. Some agencies will pull you off the street. Some agencies are going to tie you up in that deposition. They're going to tie you up in the investigation. You will not be working, particularly if it's a use of force case. So you've got that side of it as well.
Speaker 4:All the philosophy behind QI was, if you're going to put these officers into these decisions where they have to make discretionary judgment calls every single day, maybe dozens of times a day, we cannot put them in a situation where anybody can file a frivolous lawsuit against them and now they have to go to trial and a jury gets to tell them no, we now understand what you did was reasonable. Because look what's the alternative going to be. I thought about this as I was, you know, preparing to talk about this today with you guys. Could you imagine if we told prosecutors or plaintiff's attorneys or the community members if you file a lawsuit against the police a 1983 action and you lose, you are liable for filing a frivolous lawsuit. We will take money from you for filing a frivolous lawsuit. We will take money from you for filing that frivolous lawsuit. We don't have that right. The plaintiff's attorneys can file these suits and they just have to have a good faith basis, which is whatever their client tells them and what they can sort of manufacture from the case it has not.
Speaker 4:At that stage those facts are not the actual facts of what happened. We cannot look at almost any QI case and say this is now makes clearly established law. Because, to Mr Belfort's point, what is clearly established is you cannot sick a dog on a surrendering person, right, if that person is obviously surrendering, they're not actively resistant. It is already clearly established. You cannot do that. Even in the Baxter case, that was clearly established. What was not clearly established, according to that court in their judgment and I don't know the facts what is not clearly established is that under these facts that would have been obvious to the officers. Now I keep hearing he was. The court said it was. The court can't say it was because the facts were never developed. So Mr Biltfold would respond yes, we'd like them to be developed, developed. So Mr Biltfold would respond yes, we would. We'd like them to be developed.
Speaker 4:That's his entire point is let this get to not not just the initial pleadings, not just to the qualified immunity summary judgment stage. Get this into an adversarial system where the evidence can be fully considered, it can be tested through cross-examination. We can watch the videos, we can bring in the experts and not let a jury tell you whether the officer was correct or not. If we did that, every single time someone alleged a constitutional violation against the police, we, we would, we would, we would come to a screeching halt. Right, the entire system would come to a halt. So that's just one of the philosophies behind it.
Speaker 4:As a practical matter, as a practical matter, you can't give so much weight to the pleadings at a QI stage, right, and, and Mr Belfort's pointing to that particular one and, by the way, mr Belfort, I all day long this is a good discussion for me the. But the idea that those facts, when he says you cannot set a dog on a surrender in person, right, that is clearly established. That was not what that case stood for. And the fact that the court said well, under these facts, based on the record in front of us which, by the way they were interpreting in favor of the plaintiff, they still found that it was not close enough. Now here's the other thing I'll tell Mr Billiard Courts get this wrong.
Speaker 4:They get it wrong. We can find cases where they get it wrong both directions. I hate precedential value of courts. I get a court that tells me no reasonable officer could believe that somebody within 21 feet can get to you and stab you. They've said that in a Maryland case the court decided that a jury could find that someone with a knife within 21 feet cannot get you. It defies the laws of physics and yet they held that as now precedent until it got appealed and in that case, after the guy was shot, he traveled another 30 feet.
Speaker 4:The point is, these courts are not in a position at that stage because they do not have the benefit of experts in human performance, they don't have the benefits of the experts in video, they don't have the benefits of use of force experts, or just they don't have any of that at that stage. Now they get a little bit more of it at the summary judgment stage, but not at the initial motion to suppress, which is just a pleading. And so this is the challenge here is we're going to look at cases and we'll all find cases where we're like how was qualified immunity granted in that case? Or we're going to look at a case, which we see a lot of, where qualified immunity is denied and you're like how on earth is this court denying qualified immunity in this case? And I'll say a lot. Those are the ones that come to our attention and what you realize is they have to interpret it in a light most favorable to the non-moving party.
Speaker 4:So now I want you to imagine being a cop and matt I, I appreciate what you're saying. I don't know any cops even think about qualified immunity in those terms, like they're either bad cops that are not, they're either going to be, they're either going to be rogue cops that are not. Uh, I don't know if you're from chicago. I I understand chicago. Talking to some of the lieutenants up there, they've got bad cops. They've got really bad, like criminal gangs working for the Chicago Police Department, according to one of their own lieutenants. Ok, fair enough.
Speaker 4:Qualified immunity, whether they have it or not, is not the answer to that. There are other remedies. In fact, if you got a cop who's committing crimes, it's not a lawsuit that we would actually be wanting to go after. It would be a criminal case, right, and you still got internal affairs, still got criminal cases, you still have other civil lawsuits, but we're qualified immunity is not going to apply. But this is the problem. This is this is how I'm seeing it, and I think our tension point is we are imagining two things. One, that it's qualified media stage. What they said in that case, what they said in that pleading, is what happened.
Speaker 4:And then it is egregious police example. To your question, eric, specifically if it's so bad that it would be obvious to any reasonable officer, qi doesn't apply. And you will see those cases as well. That's why those cases get settled. It's not the QI cases that are the most egregious, it's the ones that are most obviously excessive. They're the ones that are going to get settled, the ones that there's a disagreement as to the facts. There's a disagreement and understanding of the laws applied to those facts. Those are the ones where QI gets asserted and granted. If the cop there's going to be plenty of cases where the cop did something knows he's wrong and they're going to get sued and they're going to slam down qualified immunity because that's their right and we can all look at it and go you're not winning this, you're not going to win this on the marriage, you're not going to win this at the QI stage, and we can all see those cases as well. But the problem is lifting. Qi is a protection.
Speaker 3:I want every cop to imagine every single Terry stop, you ever did where you ended up releasing the guy.
Speaker 4:And imagine now you're getting sued and that has to go to a jury before you get to go back to work. Oh no, oh no, which takes years, mr Belfort. That would be years in federal court.
Speaker 2:Oh no, it already is, because I just gave you a case, I'm agreeing with you.
Speaker 4:I'm agreeing that it's not saving time by taking it to trial listen, sir.
Speaker 2:What I'm saying to you is that only a third of the 1983 cases that are brought have that qi thing, which obviously means that the majority of the cases that are still being brought are being brought and they're not bringing the qualified immunity up into it. So the frivolous cases will still be frivolous cases. The boogeyman is out of the closet, but yet they will get disposed of because they're full of shit cases. What I'm trying to say is that this QI, it just is not working. It does not purport to do what you have said that it does. If 99.98% of every cop that you're talking to, would you cops want to get out here and do this job, tell them this you want to recruit some cops. Mr Billfold is about to recruit all the cops in America. Check this out, guys. Even if you fuck up right and you lose your qualified immunity because you know more about pen V memes, because you like snatching people out of cars, but you don't know the five elements of the First Amendment, trust me, guys, when you lose your qualified immunity and have to be financially liable, you will be municipally indemnified. There's your. I'm bringing the cops in now.
Speaker 2:None of these cops, who even lose their damn QI pay anything. Why can we be not honest with what's going on? How is it somehow going to? I don't want any cop who's scared of losing qualified immunity to even be a cop, because obviously you don't know what the hell qualified immunity is. You don't, you don't, you don't, you know what you're. If you mess up and lose your qi cops, all you cops watch it. Hey, this is the angry guy. Hey, listen, even if you lose that qi buddy, you won't pay a dime. It's proven statistically. None of these people here on the panel can argue that it is a fact.
Speaker 1:Numbers don't lie and we, the people, can count but part of the problem with that that that is also in the equation is you can still lose your job. You can still never be a cop. You can there's. There's other factors to it other than just qi but have you guys not?
Speaker 2:maybe there's some guys who might need to lose their damn job being officers? I think we review some of them on this channel every week. This is not getting off into that point, Eric.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about qualified immunity, but it's a factor. Hold on, sir.
Speaker 2:Hold on, but it's a tiny factor. Look, parsley on top of my steak is a factor, but it don't change the sizzle. Stop, don't play with me, sir. Look, I love you. Eric Vaughn talked about all this stuff about the legal system, defendants who are accused of violating the Constitution. They have two different categories of protection it's substantive and procedural protection. It's substantive and procedural protection. Substantively, the government defendants can only be held liable for violating the Constitution if they violate that clearly established right. That's not in 1983 that you showed earlier. It's at any right. The term clearly established was put in there by the Supreme Court. It is not in the law. So we don't have to talk about fixing QI. Stop letting the Supreme Court pretend that it's in the law. So we could not. We don't have to talk about fixing qi. Stop letting the supreme court pretend that it's following the law. It is not following the law. You pulled it up earlier. Everybody go look at it. Clearly established is not. It says any right, not. Okay, I want to hear von talk about that specific part.
Speaker 1:Oh fuck, I want to hear him talk about that specific part. So we've we've talked about to hear him talk about that specific part. So we've talked about it and glossed over it. But what is this? Clearly established law part.
Speaker 4:Well, there's two parts of it, one. I would say the other thing that if the audience isn't aware, remember it's a civil case, so 49 people can agree with the cop. If 51 disagree, he's civilly liable. Right, and that's what they would constitute as clearly established. 51% certainty from a civilian jury has decided you are civilly liable constitutes clearly established. That's insane, right. So they don't actually ever get to clearly established, unless we can look at the case ourselves and go, yeah, you do that, you can't have the guy, and we've all seen those cases where somebody has obviously surrendered. Now I'm looking at it from a video, not from the person at the scene, so I don't know what they saw, what, how they interpreted it. But fair enough, let's imagine the case where we saw it was the guy, was done and some. I got a case right now like that where I'm not testifying for the police in this case, but it's clear that this person has given up and there's force being used. Okay, great, we got those cases.
Speaker 4:The problem is qualified immunity is a protection in civil cases and, yeah, it's not effective. He's making the argument and I think the statistics show the officers aren't losing money. But if you've ever been sued and you know about having to go to depositions. You know I had about doing administrative light duties. It is going to be a huge mental strain and a huge inconvenience and you're going to be off the street in a lot of cases. Some people work the entire time, others don't. Okay, fair enough. Now to your, your, your.
Speaker 4:What was the other question, eric, that you want me to address more specifically? That there's other avenues by which accountability can be held. Yeah, yeah, so if an officer goes to the merits, like, let's say, they do not survive qualified immunity, the case goes to the merits and the jury decides by 51% they disagree with the officer. 51% they disagree with the officer. Remember, this is another incredibly important part of qualified immunity, because the question isn't whether they violated the right right. The question that the jurors are asked to answer is that no reasonable officer could have believed this was okay. Are you telling me, jury, that no officer could have believed this was okay? They have to say yes to hold them liable. So let's say 51% of them. They say well, we have a 51% certainty that he should have known better, that any reasonable officer would have known this. Okay, that leaves 49% unclear. Still, and to Mr Belfort's point.
Speaker 4:These go on for years, whether it's a qualified immunity or it's a trial. So qualified immunity is not always speeding it up but it is speeding up an awful lot of them. Right, it's dismissing an awful lot of them quickly. But the other ones that don't get initial qualified immunity, sure they're going to appeal it. They're going to appeal it. That's their right. If they go to trial and say we want to get it to a jury, that jury, that jury trial is going to put them on a docket that is years out, like this is not going to speed it up either.
Speaker 4:So they find some of them aren't, aren't meeting the policy objective of preventing them from having to drag out and be distracted from their actual positions.
Speaker 4:Right To have to litigate these cases, but it does as a trade-off, because all policy decisions are trade-offs between accountability and the discretionary function of the officers.
Speaker 4:Right, that's being debated at a policy level and if we say that it's not effective, then maybe that from a policy level it's not effective, right, and they can look at that. But what is effective is that you are preventing a whole lot of cases from getting even filed because of qualified immunity, where the attorneys are looking at it going, this isn't going anywhere, right off its face. And the ones that do make it to that point, the ones that are egregiously pled, may be because they reflect egregious conduct, or may be because they were just artfully pled that way. We have no idea until you actually get to the merits of the case or at least through some good discovery. So these are the problems. I think the biggest problem with this whole qualified or using 1983 as a tool for accountability is the 51% certainty and then claiming that 51% certainty somehow provides you clear notice that this constituted a violation that wasn't otherwise clear in advance, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, I'm going to unmute you, mr Belfold, but before I do, before I do, brother, I've got some videos I want to pull up that are questionable of whether qualified immunity should be pulled or it's the whole reason it exists and one of the reasons that I'm still on the, on the, on the. I think there should be some qualified immunity. I'm about I believe it should be tweaked, because I I don't like some of the stuff, like Mr Belford pointed out, like how it's taken forever or the. You know, only less than a percent of anybody's ever got paid out or anything like that. Like that seems shady.
Speaker 1:This does seem something's up with that. Um, so there's something that needs to be fixed. But, um, the thing that really has me paranoid as a cop is the lawsuit stuff and being tied up in litigations and not being able to do your job if your department pulls you from the street. Now, matt, is that something that you've ever considered when thinking about your qualified immunity stuff? Like if somebody files just a frivolous lawsuit on you and now you're pulled off the street because that's the policy of your department.
Speaker 3:No, not really. I mean, I work in a very busy city and I've done everything you can think of and it's just never really crossed my mind. I've just been ethical, done my job right and, like we were saying earlier, I mean if you're a righteous cop, then it's really not too much to worry about. That's why I have an issue with it, because it seems like what may protect me is also protecting someone who's not righteous. That's my big issue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think that's fair and and that's why I'm like, that's why I'm a fence sitter on this, like I'm like I I see both sides, like I don't, you know, and you know you may be the most righteous cop in the world, but all they have to do is file the lawsuit and and tell the lawyer this is what he did and and that's enough for that lawyer to be able to file that, couldn't that?
Speaker 3:happen with any job or any person I don't know.
Speaker 2:Listen, listen here. Okay, think about this Out of only one. I'm going to say this real slow for everybody, so we can lose the fear. I'm going to say this real slow for everybody, so we can lose the fear. Only one third of 1983 cases for violation of rights.
Speaker 3:Only one third have qualified immunity. We're not talking about qualified immunity.
Speaker 2:No, you're not. I'm getting to the next part. You want to leave all that bond talk for 20 minutes? Then I mean, what do you want to do, eric? What I'm saying is that think about the 66%. You know what's going on with them.
Speaker 2:The same shit you're talking about, you're scared of, is cops getting sued for some bullshit. It doesn't even have to assert qualified immunity because they do their preliminary investigations and they look into it and go, oh my goodness, no, the body cam shows none of this happened, like this person said, and they don't even have to assert the qualified immunity. That's 66% of the cases. So 66% of the cases that you're worried about somebody bringing again, which is a violation of 1983, don't even need cops, don't need to assert it, because most of the cops out there are just trying to do a good job. But you're scared to death from your culture. That qi is somehow going to ruin. Oh no, if they take the qi, no 66 of the 1983 cases, okay, in which a 1983 lawsuit is brought, the cops don't even the people don't even need to get involved with asserting their qualified immunity because it's just so full of shit. So the cases that you're worried, oh man, cops don't want to get tied up just because they say it Okay, they're going to do it Comes with the territory. Thank God that only half less than half of a percent of the cops who've ever lost their QI and were held liable had to pay a dime because they were municipally indemnified.
Speaker 2:None of these things that you say you are afraid of actually exist and the facts and the numbers show it. I'm just trying to help you out. That's the reason why we're not talking about the QI cases. We're talking about the ones where cops are doing the right things or the the public government Agents are doing the right things. You know it's. I Just stop being scared. You're not going to lose cops if anything. Or QI only protects the bad cops, really, because you're gonna get the lawsuits, they're gonna come. What happens in those 66% of the other cases that QI is not asserted Vaughn? What's happening is those are going to trial. Holy shit.
Speaker 4:They're going to trial.
Speaker 2:And guess what? But they're not even getting to trial because they're going at summary judgment. They're going. This case smells like a fart in a car and I do not like it. Therefore, qualified immunity is granted. This is some nonsense. Get this shit out of my courtroom. That's what will happen if they even do it, but so it doesn't. The cases where the cops are not doing wrong are the 66 percent where they don't even bother to raise QI. If QI was effective at saving you guys, wouldn't y'all use it 100 percent of the time.
Speaker 4:So let me answer that the time. So let me answer that If it was that effective?
Speaker 2:if it was that effective, wouldn't 100% of all 1983 cases have a QI assertion? If what you're saying is true, QI existing is the only thing you're saying. That's stopping the floodgates of 1983 lawsuits, when they only make up a third of the defenses asserted in these lawsuits.
Speaker 4:The majority of those that are dismissed. The majority of the cases that are dismissed outside of QI that are filed or for lack of personal involvement, the officer wasn't involved or the city wasn't involved. Failure to state a claim that might be like what you've alleged here isn't even a constitutional violation. You failed to state a claim. There's immunity for the municipal ones because you're including municipal 1983 actions in that big subset and they're also procedural defects. Like you're in the wrong jurisdiction, you didn't file it correctly and that has nothing to do with the merits. Those cases are being dismissed and qi is not being asserted for a whole host of other reasons beyond the merits.
Speaker 1:Did we lose him? Okay, hold on, mr Belfold, I'm trying to get you there, you go. Okay. Now I will say, based on what you just told me, mr Belfold, all right, fair, you've eliminated a lot of that fear that I would have as far as getting sued and getting ripped off. So if that's the process and that's how it's worked out now you know this isn't something that I obviously look into a whole lot because it doesn't affect me. I'm not out there violating people's rights or getting wrapped up in crazy ass cases or any of that stuff, so it's never really affected me. Banning have you ever come close to any qualified immunity needs?
Speaker 5:I've actually testified in a couple and it was. It was it needed to be testified in and it made a bad name and and answers were were were done at a district level and it was taken care of and there was liability on the department and vicarious liability on that officer. That were paid and I'm glad they were. I mean I can't go into the details but the courtroom and the victim got their justice on what was deserved on that.
Speaker 1:Gotcha Can address this. Uh um von? I've heard this in new york and I'm hearing this in colorado about um they've eliminated qualified immunity. Now, from my understanding you can't eliminate it because it's the state we're talking state stuff, eric yeah not, not, not that you did not.
Speaker 2:The supreme court's magical look at this thing called qi I made like pinocchio. Not that thing. They're talking about the state's rights violation. So any lawsuits brought up in state court, that's what that's for. It has nothing to do with the 1983 claim no.
Speaker 1:No, I get that, yeah, but is there anything to add to that, Vaughn, other than?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean their goal in that was to shift. You know, the officers are faced with like five percent or twenty five thousand dollars in personal liability which they can in most cases get insurance to cover, um and only. But they only get that limit to the five percent of the twenty five thousand dollars, uh, personally, if it was not intentional or not gross negligence. So, yeah, they're shifting liability from municipal paying it to insurance companies paying it. That was a big, big part of it.
Speaker 4:Mr Buford's spot on it's about state civil rights claims, not not federal civil rights claims. So, yeah, it's not, it's not killing it over there. They they have, but they have also the procedural postures later. So there is more evidence development in colorado at the early stages. So you're not going to be able to assert it as a motion to dismiss at the at the initial filing. Their procedure requires a fuller, uh evolution of the of the evidence so that they can make those determinations earlier with more evidence, which probably, probably is a good thing. So, yeah, I don't think that it ended up being the death knoll. What it does is it feeds insurance companies and I don't think right now I know any officers who get a 5% or even a $25,000 fee against them. The. The problem is again remember, 49 people can agree with the officer, 51 disagree and he's paying 25 000 if, if they they just decided and they never have vaughn.
Speaker 2:I respect. I respect you a lot, von. You have no idea. I've watched hours of your online the, the type of the, the fact I see what you bring to the use of force and understanding the way that it happens in human beings and how we spot these things and how to better train police. I appreciate it. And all these people in here that are screaming and hollering, even though they see us butting heads they, they have no idea of what you do. They have no idea of what you do and I do. So I just want you to know that I'm not hot with you in a personal way, but I do believe that the way you've represented this has been a little bit of that cop's plane and shell game.
Speaker 2:Most of the time, what QI does is it wears down worthy litigants, good plaintiffs who have good cases get worn down. And if we have to go to numbers and studies, I'll read from that part of it. Interlocutory appeals make up a substantial portion of qualified immunity litigation more than a third, nearly 2,000 appeals from 2010 to 2020. And they appear to be growing. The data show that interlocutory appeals, along with qualified immunity appeals, generally increased over their study period and they ended up showing that between the last 2010 to the last half of that section, it went up 20%. Okay, I had read that earlier in it. Clearly, government defendants do not hesitate to take advantage of these special rights. Indeed, interlocutory appeals represented 96% of all appeals filed by defendants. The prevalence of interlocutory appeals may explain why the median duration of a qualified immunity lawsuit in this data set was three years and two months, 23% longer than a typical civil suit upon a federal appeal. Prior research also suggests that interlocutory appeals contribute to lawsuit length, averaging more than a typical civil suit upon a federal appeal. Prior research also suggests that interlocutory appeals contribute to lawsuit length, averaging more than a year 441 days from filing the resolution.
Speaker 2:So that is. There's some numbers for you guys to look at. This is not about the police use of force things. Qi is such a broken doctrine that does not do what it's reported to do that it's being abused by town hall people working at town hall, police mayors, clerks of court, everybody and their grandma who are using this qualified immunity for just like that case I gave you earlier, which is 12 years. Yeah, that might have been extreme, but this is from information that was just released last year. We can dig into these numbers and have a real conversation. It lengthens the time these things are in court. So how does qualified immunity in any way lessen the burden on the legal system? If you can make that make sense, I'll go do the PT test at the sheriff's department and and take my one bullet in the revolver and totally barney fife it up in this love it well, you're.
Speaker 4:You're. You're not including all the cases that aren't filed because of qi, right, and you're not. You're not including all the cases where you're talking about the ones that do, that do get interlocked appeals. You're telling me how long they are. You're not telling me all the cases that got dismissed early on QI, right. So the benefit of QI is to prevent, right? The benefit of QI, the policy behind it, was to prevent official government actors who engage in discretionary functions from having to defend themselves every time they make a discretionary decision. Those are not egregious cases. The filings of those in that body of cases you're citing include absolutely frivolous cases, right? Not the QI cases.
Speaker 4:I think you're imagining one third of these are the most egregious cases and the police are not being held accountable, where QI does not protect officers from excessive use of force or constitutional violations that are obvious, that are beyond debate, right? So if you look at that, if we look at a video or they look at the evidence and they go, any officer would have known this was bad. These guys are not surviving qualified immunity, right, they're going to have to go. So if you're going to find a case where you disagree with the qualified immunity assertion, we'd have to look at that specific case and see what rationale the the court relied on. Almost always it's because they didn't buy the plaintiff's assertions right. So when we say somebody was surrendering, for example, and we're like you cannot stick a dog on a surrendering, for example, and we're like you cannot stick a dog on a surrendering person, they didn't buy that he was obviously surrendering, such that the officers would have known that they didn't buy it. That was the reason for the distinction in the case. That is going to be the biggest distinction when a case gets qualified immunity and a lot of us are looking at it and go how did that happen?
Speaker 4:One, because we did not realize that the factual assertion did not reflect the reality of the case, or we put ourselves in a position that was different than the officers at the time. We had the benefit of outcome bias and certainty bias all the things we like to talk about and we watched it on video. We were not the officers at the scene. The court has to consider it and look through the lens of the officer at the scene. So if we look after the fact and say this was clearly excessive, any officer would have known it based on the video, then we have to take a step back and go well, the officer is not the video.
Speaker 4:What did that officer know? And based on what they knew, would it have been obvious that what they did was illegal? In the K-9 case, the court simply said no and I don't know the case, so I don't know that. I agree with the court. You obviously don't. You know the case more than I do. I don't have a position on that case of whether it was obvious or not, but I'm telling you just quickly, looking at that as an example, the court did not buy that argument that he was obviously surrendering.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:I mean, okay, I really don't. Uh, one thing about it that's crazy is that you keep talking about legalities. Unlike most legal defenses, in qi, the burden is on the plaintiff, not the government, to prove that qi doesn't apply yeah, it's not a defense, though, right, it's immunity, it's not a defense listen, it's okay.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you what to us laymen bond. When you somebody is bringing a case against you and you don't, instead of answering for it and giving your defense in front of a jury, you go and assert something called qualified immunity. We'll just call it a defense, because you're asserting it in court to avoid having any defense for the case being brought against you. How fine will we split these hairs?
Speaker 4:von well, that's an important one when you're talking about burden of proof what I'm I'm talking.
Speaker 2:If we're talking, not talking about burden of proof, sir, we're talking about qi. The problem is that we're looking at all the ways that it just does not work. It doesn't lower the amount of time cases spend in court. It's proven, it's in the studies. If you want to refute the Institute for Justice, in their know they had over 7,000 cases, the largest data set ever gone through, and we actually have numbers to look at the accountability, so we can stop with the cops flaining and all of these other things. You keep talking about the legal aspect because you're a lawyer, right, right and I respect that. But we're not even. We're not even getting to the fact that it gives so much advantage to the government and the government actors. Like I was saying earlier before, eric went right back to you to ask prove a government defendant can only be held liable for violating the Constitution if they violate clearly established right Something made up by the Supreme Court, not violate a right, like it says in the law. The Supreme Court added the word clearly established in front of right. There we go Boom, but a clearly established right, and like what you're saying about it being baked in the Fourth Amendment or whatever the hell, that was right. A clearly established right in these cases means a plaintiff needs to point to a defendant who did exactly the same thing in the same circumstances, the same set of facts, and was held to have violated the Constitution. Otherwise you're out of luck. Layered on top of that, substantive protection is procedural protection. Layered on top of that substantive protection is procedural protection.
Speaker 2:Qualified immunity is, if you get it denied at any stage at motion, dismissed because the judge is like this is some bullshit, this is some bullshit. I've seen a lot of cases, officer, and this is some horse shit. It's gone. Qualified immunity denied Immediate appeal. Summary judgment immediate appeal the case I showed you earlier, 12 years. Why Qualified immunity appeals? This has nothing to do with oh, who's going to protect these decisions that cops have to make in the moment?
Speaker 2:Listen, out of the one-fifth of the cases of 1983 that were First Amendment 50, over 50 percent had alleged premeditation, like the case I brought up with Mr Farnborough, where the mayor sent the police to take the man's sound truck. It was all the charges were. The mayor did the. The DAs are having a fit with this nonsense. Okay, and they're fine. That woman's going for the qualified immunity. That's what. That's why the Institute for Justice has taken that man's case. This is not about qualified immunity, somehow protecting the spirit ether for good cops who don't want to get caught up in a bad lawsuit by crikey. No, no, it's not doing that. That's not what it's doing, and we have that in the numbers and we can look at those numbers now.
Speaker 4:Well, the numbers they don't have is how many people aren't filing the suits because they know they're not going to go anywhere, right? And the other thing is, when you say that judge looks at that, he looks at that and he goes no, you're not getting qualified immunity.
Speaker 2:I'm looking at these facts and this is obviously excessive and this is obviously a violation like a judge, who's like a judge who might have said you know what I I see a case out of the sixth circuit that says this man who surrendered and was laying prone and attacked, his rights were violated. So I'm taking your qualified immunity and then you file your interlocutory appeal.
Speaker 2:Now you get three judges look at it and they go oh well, it wasn't so clearly established now, was it? This is what I'm getting at. Yes, Thank you, Vaughn, for bringing that out for me. That's exactly what I'm talking about. You get to keep appealing. You get to bite from that appeal apple. Oh, taken away. Oh no, I don't get qualified immunity. Oh, I get it again now.
Speaker 2:Oh wait, the judge said, like the case I gave you, it's not about cops, and I particularly brought Mathis versus the County of Lyon. So if we take y'all out of this oh, the QI protects the heroes and take you out of that nonsensical it's a silly, childish way to think, because the facts prove that it doesn't. This is qualified immunity, whether it's police, use of force or abuse of whatever Qualified immunity is used to prolong the litigation. It is a fact. The numbers prove that out to be a fact. I gave you an example where it took 12 years to find a bad government actor guilty. That is a fact. So do not say that qualified immunity. You can't point to anything that it's done. You're saying well, it doesn't show this. There's a lot of things that don't show a lot of things, Vaughn, but the numbers show something we should dig into that.
Speaker 4:We should dig into these numbers. Here's what I understand about these cases. When that judge looks at that piece of paper and says this is obviously a violation and the officer looks at their attorney and goes none of that's true, none of that happened. He goes we're going to appeal it, don't worry. Why do they appeal? It is because they want to keep the case in front of judges, not juries, because they know there's jurisdictions where as soon as you get in front of that jury, it becomes a complete roll of the dice. People are convicted all the time by juries in activist states and activist jurisdictions where it's 51% and they know an insurance company is going to pay for it. So the jurors have no real incentive to side with a cop, right? So they don't want the case to go in front of a jury. Any attorney will tell you the last place't want the case to go in front of a jury. Any attorney will tell you the last place you want your case criminal or civilian is in front of a jury. You want it dismissed under legal grounds and procedural grounds. That's what QI does. The second thing is if you look at that piece of paper and the judge says this is an obvious excessive use of force and I'm going to deny you qualified immunity. And the entire police department is looking at that officer going. Based on understanding this case, you were within policy, you within training and the officer's like none of this and this pleading happened, none of it. And yes, they're going to have an intellectual appeal because they're not going to roll the dice with a jury and have to get up and go.
Speaker 4:Look, he's lying about everything he said in here. We did not have that vantage point. We were not clear. The guy had surrendered. This is what we saw and this is what we knew. We made our decisions and they're discretionary decisions and maybe you disagree, but reasonable people are allowed to disagree under the law. We don't send that to a jury to debate tactical decisions at a 51% certainty. That's why they keep it in qualified immunity. That's why they keep it in front of judges. That's the benefit.
Speaker 2:Okay, go back on. Sorry word. They pull out what information they have, all their, and again the jury's like this is some bullshit. This cop did nothing wrong. I'm sure that bond has worked in cases where juries have come back and found no wrongdoing, so I don't want to hear this shit that's not a jury, it's a judge.
Speaker 2:The qualifying meeting is a judge decision I'm talking about if we get to a jury trial. You've never, you've never, uh, testified at a jury trial in defense of a cop or anybody else of use of force. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 4:Yeah, of course I do and remember at a criminal stage. That's beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 2:This is what I'm talking about. Yes, Vaughn, isn't it crazy how there was some justice there and people got in front of a judge? Let's get it in front of the judge.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but I've also seen cops go to prison. I've seen cops go to prison when everybody involved in the case said he followed policy, he followed training, he did everything he was trained to do Everybody said what he did was reasonable.
Speaker 2:A jury came back and said we would have done it different. You're going to prison. We're not talking about criminal charges. We, the people, are the ones who have to worry about whether the charges y'all write on us stick or not. We're talking about 1983 civil rights cases and our ability to redress our government and the fact that QI does not let us. So I don't want to hear anything about the cops.
Speaker 2:I know Eric right now can tell you a story, I'm sure, of a cop who was probably a great cop, and there's two other cops doing something, three or four other cops doing something bad, and all this guy does is like what happens to a lot of us they send a blue and white in to pick you up and take you to the processing and the other people did some messed up stuff and violated rights, and now that other good cop is caught up in the mix and getting slammed right.
Speaker 2:There's those cases out there, but none of y'all can name a cop who ever lost two red nickel red pennies rubbed together in a liability. It's proven in the numbers. This is what I'm saying. It's not there. It is not there. There are more cases of officers being thrown under the bus and their lives ruined by their own people not taking care of them and looking out for those good officers because of a bad culture of corruption than there are any cop who's ever. If you find me one cop who has ever, ever lost their home or anything to acute losing their QI, ever lost their home or anything to acute losing their qi uh assertion and being held liable for a 1983 violation bond, I will let you put me in a rear naked choke at that next expo that y'all have for police out there and I'll pretend to be a uh antifa and you can just beat the shit out of me because I know you won't find one.
Speaker 1:I know you won't find one time, time, time. Holy shit, this was good. All right, listen, we're on the two hour mark. All right, I want to. I want to do a little. I want to do a quick little wrap up. Um, before we get to that banning and matt, this has been like a show for us, like exactly what I was looking forward to all my popcorn we, we, yep, we.
Speaker 1:We knew we weren't gonna get entertains me enough. I deserve to return the favor. We knew we weren't gonna go a whole lot in, so what I would like to do is we saw a lot of you guys's comments.
Speaker 1:We just we didn't want to interrupt these two, we wanted to let them go I was trying to karate, chop me with four science sorcery so, um, and and one of the things we love about mr billfold and we were discussing it behind the scenes is if we can just keep him from losing his cool, he can make waves, and I think I think you were able to manage it just enough to. I think we're getting you around there, bud.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm already there, let me just say something. I want to thank Matt Thorne, all right, because that's how I found you guys. I want to thank the community out there. Coco, I see you, I know, I think Shotguns and Tats, all the rest of y'all I love y'all out there. Navia, the one who's got me blocked because she's very passive, aggressive. I'm glad.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you're here too, gal, it's nice to see you so um but there's no hate and the reason I don't hate cops anymore because I really didn't have any use for anybody in a, in a uniform after what I've been through, what my wife's been through and other things. But matt showed me that you know, it's like mark twain said hate, hate is an acid that does more damage to the vessel you keep it in than anything you can pour it onto. You know what I'm saying and I had this hatred and instead y'all took shots. I've shot shots at bannon, I shot shots at eric, I'm shooting shots at von when he's gaslighting like crazy um, but at the end, but at the end of the day. But at the end of the day, I know y'all care.
Speaker 2:We don't have to agree on these things, but we have to have the conversations. So thank you, matt, for bringing me to these guys because I don't harass you. But I want everybody from Matt's channel, if you like this type of thing, come on back and see us every week, because we jump in with both feet and do flutter kicks. I want to be quiet on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that we you know and this is goes over to matt's channel too um, we give you guys. Look, mr billfold is not a part of the show, but he's on here getting his voice, he's getting his chance to speak. How much, how often do you see that in any other thing that's that has cops involved? Vaughn, you've been on more cop things than any of us combined on this panel. Have you ever been a part where they actually allow somebody from the audience to come up and do something like this? No, not on podcasts.
Speaker 4:We love to do like the community groups.
Speaker 4:Just sit in there and sit there and just take it yeah, the town halls, the universities, the community groups and just have these discussions. We hope that the disagreements and the gaps are just misunderstanding of each other's positions and we can close that gap. I think today a little bit, me and Mr Belfold have really gotten into whether the rationale and policy behind qualified immunity is effective, whether it's actually doing what it's intended to do. Those are policy discussions, right, that's easy. I agree, as long as and I don't think we disagree on at least three fourths of that, because it's you're right the money incentive is not the big incentive, so I think that's failed. If that was one of the concerns that the original Supreme Court who recognized qualified immunity had, then that hasn't played out as being a concern, and so that's a good thing.
Speaker 4:There's other social interests that are being balanced with qualified immunity. We talked about those today, interests that are being balanced with qualified immunity. We talked about those today, whether those are being effectively met or not, one of which Mr Billfold has talked a lot about, whether it's saving them time in court, right, and the research is showing that those cases that go are spending a lot of time, right, I think, proving the negative. How many cases aren't going because of qualified immunities is tough, right, you'd have to talk to the attorneys and all the plaintiffs who like, how come you didn't bring your case against the cop and like we weren't going to survive qualified immunity? Okay, fine, those cases, um. But I think we're coming down to whether or not qualified immunity is doing what it's intended to do, and how do you protect and and maybe this is a question we didn't really get after too much but do we believe that any protection should exist for people who are engaged in discretionary functions?
Speaker 2:any protection.
Speaker 2:I would like to say vaughn uh for on behalf of the community, because we don't get a chance to say these things to you. Police, I'm telling you is this and even when qualified immunity was created in pearson ray, it even went on good faith. But I'm telling you is this and even when qualified immunity was created in pearson ray, it even went on good faith. But I'm telling, even so, when it was first pulled out of whole cloth, the clearly established part, that's 1982, when that mess came in. But what I want to say to you is this good police are protected by the reasonableness standard of the Fourth Amendment. That is why less of those cases, or 100% of all these cases, would just assert QI right off the rip. Most of them don't need to. They don't need to because these cops acted reasonably and they stand on that. The Fourth Amendment protects you guys and it does a great job and you all have great lawyers who will defend you. And I say that because I've seen good cops and I know there's good cops out there. The fourth amendment protects them. What we have proven with numbers and now, especially since it's called unaccountable for all you guys in the audience, institute of uh for justice did the study of over 7 000 all the qualified immunity appellate cases in america 20 for 10 years. The numbers are, we can look at it. Show this to your friends. It proves qualified immunity does not work. It does not work. It makes the average case 23% longer than typical federal appeal case. So here's what we know, guys. When this comes up in conversations outside of here and you're hearing the cops tell you this and that, go show them some numbers, because if we can't be man and woman enough to sit down and look at numbers because everybody can count a monkey can count to five. I've seen him do it on his hand, so you know, let's go, we can sit down and look at these numbers. Qualified immunity is not in any way, shape or form sparing any of these cops. Any problems. The cases are going to come, regardless of whether QI is there. It's not going to be a huge increase. All qualified immunity really does, guys and let's make sure they understand it is it makes it difficult for a person whose rights have been violated to seek redress. That is what qualified immunity does.
Speaker 2:The Vaughn and I may disagree because he hasn't read this, but who the hell does you people need to read it. Stop getting on here screaming abolish QI in Matt's channel and thinking that's going to stop cop abuse. Because it's not. Because QI ain't stopped a damn thing yet. None of those guys who lost it. They were indemnified, they didn't pay a dollar. You're not stopping them. It does not disincentivize abusive police behavior. You're going to see the same videos on Matt Thornton's channel day in, day out, if he posts them because QI has nothing to do with it. So you guys need to study up and learn what it is. Stop. Just the same way, these cops are fooling themselves into thinking that QI helps them or protects them. You folks think QIi magically, if they got rid of it, would make cops stop violating rights, and let me tell you that is not how this works. They even when they lose qi, they don't pay a dime.
Speaker 4:So what we need to do is learn things, become motivated, become informed and come on here and battle with four science wizards yeah, I would let me wrap up one, one very small point of that because I don't want to be left silent on that issue. I just I would just encourage people to relook the distinguish, the distinction you're making between qi and reasonableness, and the fourth amendment. I made the case earlier. They cannot be divorced they. They operate in tandem. One you cannot even assert the 1983 action without asserting a constitutional violation. So start there. You cannot divorce those things. The reasonableness standard is part of the entire inquiry and will never be divorced from the qualified immunity question. I'll stop there and people can do their own research. Start with yeah, and then you guys can look at the actual case. I'll look at Saucier versus Katz is a good one, or Anderson versus Crate. Neither one of those will kind of give you the framework for the filing of the initial QI cases. Everything else, I'm happy to stand quiet on All right.
Speaker 1:And then there's one question came up. Vaughn, I wanted to give you a chance to defend yourself because I thought this was an unfair statement, but I want to let you handle this. Vaughn Kleem defends QI because he trains cops to avoid liability, not to face it. Of course, he backs the shield when you profit off immunity.
Speaker 4:Justice isn't your client yeah, in one sense he's absolutely right. We train. I train cops my whole career to avoid liability because I train them to make constitutional decisions. So I have focused on constitutional policing for my entire career. I focused on what are called law driven tactics, which means how do you investigate a case, how understanding what the actual rules are and then sticking within those rules. So me, and whoever that community member is, 100% agree I want constitutional policing. I want honest accountability as well. I've trained cops my entire career, for over 30 years now, to do it right. No one has ever sued me. I've never been accused of being unconstitutional. I do not just defend cops. We have plenty of cases where the cops did everything wrong and we're happy to call them out too. We do civilian cases, we do police cases. So if anyone believes that all we do is run around defending cops, that doesn't reflect the reality of my daily existence. I do understand the sentiment, but yes, I train cops to avoid liability by doing it right in the first place I think that's a fair answer sir
Speaker 2:listen, I, I agree. I. I don't think that any kind of like ad hominem attacks or questioning of von's integrity is getting anything anywhere. I will say that, um, I'm pretty sure there's times where von would you know, von cannot. Let's think about this. Side note sorry, I'm taking up all your time, guys. Vaughn has probably saw that some use of force was not called for. And guess what? I'm pretty sure that the people that were trying to defend that guy, that officer, did not want Vaughn to come in and testify, even though they might have paid to bring him in and look at it. So he can't force them to do this. Y'all need to have some realistic expectations, like we're begging these cops to have some realistic expectations. But what Vaughn said about Fourth Amendment, reasonableness, being married to QI, qi was jumped on its back. Okay, guys, because you can even find something wasn't reasonable, but it wasn't clearly established. We cannot act like that's not part of it. Y'all Look into your laws.
Speaker 1:Love you, what's up, Appreciate it Before we go. Matt, you got anything. Parting words, sir.
Speaker 3:I appreciate this.
Speaker 1:I learned a lot that's smarter than me. I love it. It was great, Banning sir.
Speaker 5:No man, 21 years in my career and I've never personally had to go through those numbers because I was presented general orders and state law and federal law and never got close to that gray line. Several arrests I've arrested, you know, to answer some of these questions in here. I hate to say it but I love to say it as well as I've arrested several cops, whether it be DWI, family violence, smuggling of drugs, smuggling of money, and you know, is that something proud to say? It is because who knows how long they got away with it and I'm glad that I'm the quote unquote cop that took that person into custody.
Speaker 5:And all those cases, everyone I just mentioned, they got time. It wasn't just a oh man, he was off on his cop cop, this cop, that no, they did their time. So I'm very, very proud to bring that up. But everybody that came here, from Mr Belfold, from Matt's page, from Vaughn's to Eric's and mine that spent the time to sit here and listen to this, this isa a huge topic that goes across the world and there's a lot of confusion in that and there's a lot of, uh, mistrust that comes from it across the country because they don't understand everything, not the people, but the police jury everybody else.
Speaker 1:So yeah, no, no I'm saying me included, like there's so much to it.
Speaker 2:I fully admit I'm an idiot, like I would really, I would really like to recommend to my friends here that are in law enforcement on this panel of esteemed gentlemen to really look into that study that came out and really look at the numbers, because I don't know. We've talked about this before and you've seen this from Lawrence Accountability. I sent you a link where a town board member there was a man holding a sign with a curse word. She told the deputy to kick him out. They kicked him out. Guy filed a lawsuit. First Amendment judge denied qualified immunity. They came in. The man came back to that place and spoke to them and did a heads up and he talked to all the law enforcement officers. And I'd like you guys to pass this to your brothers Stop being the pawns of these government actors, because they're the ones using more QI than you guys and a lot of the times when you're getting called up on this QI stuff, it's because you violated a right, because how clearly established must it be that on time, place and manner, I can be in a public forum with my cell phone?
Speaker 2:Yet how many times do we see people getting trespassed from public places and kicked out of places and having all kinds of crazy charges brought on them because of this. This is clearly established, yet it happens all the time. So I would tell you, cops out there, stop letting these folks turn your badge into their bully. You know where they hit us over the head with your badge, because you're the ones who are going to have to run around and beg that these guys like Vaughn get and get y'all some QI, because you're damn sure it should have some common sense. It's not reasonable, but you'll still get QI Because even though any reasonable cop should know, hey, this is a First Amendment, right, it's qualified immunity is the only defense that I have to disprove as the plaintiff and there's been nothing else like that in any part of legality anywhere.
Speaker 2:And if I'm wrong, vaughn will correct me because he's a lawyer. But guys, do not let these folks weaponize your badges. They're doing it, we're seeing it every day. Learn your damn Constitution and stand on it and tell these city clerks and everybody else hey, it's a cell phone camera, it's not a bomb. Stop calling my 911 with this foolishness. And you guys need to stop letting them weaponize y'all, because that's when y'all need QI the most, when you can't defend the shit for reasonableness, because I was just following orders. So stop following orders if they don't make a damn lick of sense.
Speaker 1:All right, I want to give, uh, some announcements. We, you know, we don't. One of the things we don't beat you over the head with here, guys, is our sponsors and all that stuff. We either do it right at the beginning or at the end, so you have to sit there and listen to our crap over and over again. Um, not that our sponsors are crap, that's not what I'm getting at. But uh, if you guys can take a look, mr bill and I, we're actually sporting some retro rifle tonight. So shout out to retro rifle, check them out. Another sponsor of ours is Peregrine. So this one really kind of only applies to cops and law enforcement, actually prosecutors and filing cases and stuff like that. They're another part. It's called Peregrine, like the Falcon. Yes, peregrineio, yes, sir. And if you guys check them out, you guys can basically turn your crappy videos into Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 2:From hobo chic to just the sexiest thing ever, just because of the shirt, I know right. I take the shirt off. They think I'm Jeff gray or something. Real quick man.
Speaker 1:Are we?
Speaker 5:able to do one review. I don't know what everybody's time is. I'm up in DC but I'm getting blown up Like are you guys going to at least do one body cam review? So are we? You know, do we? Do we have the time, do we not? Is the population there for it? If not, we can do it next week. But just curious.
Speaker 1:We can do one. I can pull one up real quick, you've got to agree with me.
Speaker 5:Matt has got a hall pass for a little bit and it would be great if he could stick around.
Speaker 2:You keep Matt Thornton until he gets drug away by Tennille. That's right.
Speaker 5:That's right, man, and we all love Matt, we all love Vaughn, mr Belfort. I'm very thankful that you're here doing this. We haven't personally connected. We will. I don't care if I got to fly out to you. We can have a beer together and go down the.
Speaker 2:Big spoon or little spoon?
Speaker 5:Hey, I'll take both brother, it don't matter to me.
Speaker 2:We have to establish these things. There you go, man.
Speaker 5:There you go, yeah, so.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you want to listen and dine me Banning.
Speaker 2:My favorite crayon is brick. It's my favorite flavor.
Speaker 1:There you go man All four brother Okay.
Speaker 3:I got a video pulled up.
Speaker 5:We'll do one body cam review. You're sleeping, Thanks everybody Thanks. Vaughn, are you good for a short review?
Speaker 4:Yeah, go ahead, I'm still awake. I've got Red.
Speaker 1:Bull, I like it. All. Right, let me biggie size this. We'll go over to the chat. Okay, real quick, let me go over the. Uh, what we do here? Um, let me make this appropriate size and let me turn off this ticker on the bottom here. So we got more viewing space, Okay. So, um, what we do is none of us have seen this video. Um, if any of us have seen it in the past, we'll own up to it.
Speaker 1:The whole point of our body cam reviews is not to Monday Morning Quarterback but to kind of put you in the mindset of how law enforcement training is across the board. Now, all of us on here we've all been cops and we've all been cops from around the nation, so our training is all slightly different and what we will do is we will pause as the video develops and kind of tell you what we're thinking and how we would tackle the next part of the call before we see it. So that's where you're getting the insight to how police train, how we make the decisions we make. Most of the time we get on here and sometimes we seem like Nostradamus. Sometimes the cops throw us for a loop and we discuss it. It's kind of fun. People seem to like that. Since we were getting requests for it, that's what we're doing. Somebody asked me what I'm drinking tonight. You guys aren't going to like it. I'm just drinking Liquid Death tonight, just a carbonated water. I did not have anything to drink tonight. It was a hydration day. That's what I did.
Speaker 2:No, you have anything to drink tonight. So, uh, it was a hydration day. That's what I did out of no, you gotta spin it. Man. Out of respect for all of you people, he abstained in order to give you his full attention yeah, there's that too.
Speaker 1:I just I didn't.
Speaker 4:He was like he was like a dad babysitting a sleepover. He knew there could be an emergency at any moment.
Speaker 1:He had to be sober to get us to the er I didn't want to say that, but that's pretty much what happened. So, all right, let's uh, let's get to this video here. Let me unmute it. We're already big sized. Um and uh. Thank you everybody that has sent in monetary donations tonight. You really help out the channel. It doesn't go in our pocket, just goes right back into what we're doing and uh, pays the monthly bills for all the subscription stuff that we use for this to make this stuff. So thank you very much. If you didn't get a chance to catch this episode live, it's going to be available on the audio podcast and you'll be able to watch the replay live on YouTube.
Speaker 3:Without further ado.
Speaker 1:Oh, all right, so um, we've just uh wrecked out. I think I saw airbags deploy in both vehicles. I think most vehicles have airbag deploys. It shuts that thing down right.
Speaker 5:Depending on your make and model. Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but most of them that car won't drive anymore. I don't believe.
Speaker 5:I can tell you the old Crown Vix, if the airbag went off it would still keep going. It would still keep going, would still keep going, just telling you shout out to my mom.
Speaker 1:She gave me another 50 bucks, like she spoiled me. I feel like it. It's wrong when it's your mom anyway, um country girl, she's always cheering on my mom, but uh your mom's awesome man.
Speaker 2:look, anybody who would take care of you after being left on her doorstep, that's a good woman, I know, right.
Speaker 1:So for me, guys, if I'm in the car that just got hit, the patrol car that just got hit I'm assuming the vehicles have stopped I'm going to unass and I'm going to take cover either, probably not right directly behind my car, at the best angle that I can get, where I don't think that other car can get to me. Um, that gives me some cover. Uh, I'm going to go with. I'm going to go with Mr Bill, fold on this. What? What would be your next move, sir you were a Marine?
Speaker 2:My next move, if I'm who the guy that just got whacked.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, no, no. You're the, you're the. You're the officer in the car that just got hit on.
Speaker 2:Oh man I don't know, assess my own injuries. If I have any injuries, if I don't, I'll probably have to get out and look and see how many cars were involved. Are any bodies laying around? Does anybody need immediate care? Is this car going to stay stopped? I'd have to think of a thousand things at one time. That's y'all's job. If anybody needs help because I don't give a shit about the guy driving If he hits somebody and somebody's hurt out there, I'm going to go help that and let this guy just Y'all get the drones on him.
Speaker 1:This is what I tell my rookies Scene security, self-aid, and then we get the information. So scene security, medical medical has to come first to me, because if I'm out of the fight then I'm no good to anybody. So my my medical aid. If I need a tourniquet or something serious, then self-aid.
Speaker 2:Buddy care to my co-workers and then to the bad guy um I have a question for you cops, where y'all are giving the answer have y'all had the? Does the adrenaline get so amped up, like if you were hit like that on these in these scenes, do you have injuries and you don't realize? You got really tuned up a little bit until after everything's secure and you're like, oh my god, did somebody hit me with a baseball bat?
Speaker 3:yeah, hey, I'm having.
Speaker 5:Bill Fulton, I'm going to bring two seconds. Come over here and just pop your face in here. So this is Houston Gas. He was on a family violence call, that's his real name.
Speaker 1:Houston Gas.
Speaker 5:Yeah, can't make this shit up in Texas and we're in DC right now. But here's the deal, man, he was on a family violence disturbance I'm giving you a 30,000 foot view dealing with a call with weapons, and he basically put his ear up to the door. He peacefully was able to get some people out of the house and then the violent subject in the house unfortunately shot him point blank in the face with a 12 gauge shotgun and he was basically 21 plus. Surgeries later returned and put that uniform back on to serve his community and, to give a long story short, he went to the county jail way after this and forgave the guy that shot him. So we get a true hero in our presence that's been watching this. He's one of my best friends and I just wanted to kind of make everybody's awareness be known that he's in here and this is a true he. He's frigging amazing. He just retired in law enforcement last month and now he's in the private sector and I just wanted to say he's watching this and very enthralled at this conversation.
Speaker 2:What was his name? Again Banning.
Speaker 5:Houston Gass, you can.
Speaker 2:Google it and find all of them. Hey, houston, some of these folks don't like self-proclaimed heroes, but we can proclaim you to be a hero. If somebody else does it, it's not self-proclaimed. Hey, I'm glad you made it through, man. I'm glad you found a way to keep giving back. That's pretty awesome, man, because the only thing you can do that lets those kind of people win is to stop pushing.
Speaker 1:You're not wrong, man, and I appreciate it, mr billfold, thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, man, that's awesome. Heck, yeah all right.
Speaker 2:That's why I, that's why I come here, because I I'm not these other people. I don't care if they disagree with my numbers. I do not think the majority of cops are bad. I just think that when, when you do get the bad ones, it really screws the pooch for everybody. But the more I talk to you guys, the more I'm like okay, well, I'm gonna fight you when you're wrong and I'm gonna stand with you when these guys hate on you for no reason, because there's enough, uh, focus to actually getting some work done. And it's guys like him are the reason why my heart would soften. People like matt, soft in my heart, had me a better relationship with god, you know. So everything works out great. And uh, you, uh, you know. I really appreciate you guys, whether the haters and I'm already got haters in the chat, so I'm doing great.
Speaker 1:Does anybody have anything different that they wanted to do on this call Vaughn.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I've been in two of those almost just like that. One was almost exactly like that and to to Mr Belford's point, I there wasn thought as soon as the crash, threw the thing in park as much as I could and bailed out and started checking welfare of the other person. There was no self-assessment, there was none. It was immediately go check the welfare of the person in the other car. One was a van that flipped and rolled over. The other one was an SUV that got smashed, knocked me 90 feet into a field, but in both cases it was get out and sprint to the other person but there was no thought to it. It wasn't like I was like I'm good, I'm going to go sit, it's just. That was the job. That was what you're kind of predisposed to do.
Speaker 4:One of them I had a rookie not a rookie, but a civilian ride along with me and he was frozen. I came back to check his welfare afterwards and he was bleeding because the airbag deployed. He was like I look over and you were gone and you were already up there at the van checking on the guy. He's like I had no idea what happened. That's just what happened. I don't know that there was any tactical assessments After the fact. I went and got my shotgun out of the car, my rifle out of the car because I didn't want them to explode from the fires and all that good stuff. But but the first initial jump was to get out and go check the welfare of the bad guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, just to, I'm gonna put this out there for acorn because I wrote it in the chat. But some other people are wondering where self-proclaimed hero is. Uh, he did finally get the boot where he, uh he, we can deal with the. You guys saw we let you guys insult us throughout the chat the whole time. We don't care, like free speech, baby. But where we do have problems is when you start spreading uh slanderous stuff, where you're saying that we're lying and that we're putting out uh false stuff, um, to where I think I even showed mr billfold. I gave him every opportunity to fix it and say, hey, man, not cool, like you can say whatever you want about us, but just please don't lie. Gave him the chance and he's doubled down on it. So then we had to, we had to boot him. Um, that was his own choosing, not ours. So, yeah, I, I, you guys know I let you guys say whatever you want, don't, don't care, but you're not going to you're not gonna lie.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people that do a lot of work behind the scenes, matt being one of them, banning be another. Um, we do a lot of work to put out what we put out and try to share and do the same mission. And we, god guys, how many times do we talk to each other a day?
Speaker 3:100, no that text there's like four of them oh yeah, we love it.
Speaker 1:We just daily of trying to put out good stuff for y'all and trying to do exactly what we said our mission statement is, and so can't have you, patrick.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry for the tangents, patrick, I get worked up. I've been waiting for this one for months, so I'm sorry he has been.
Speaker 1:he's been patient. Alright, let's keep going. Alright, hopefully we can switch to a body. Committee Sounds like he said he's split on foot Sounds like he said, he's split on foot.
Speaker 2:We need to get him to where he's lost. Southbound launch.
Speaker 3:Southbound launch.
Speaker 1:Southbound launch. I don't know. I think he's got something on his dashboard. That's why I was worried about that. He un-assed quick. That was awesome. That doesn't, I can tell you guys. I've watched a lot of dash cam videos of officers. When them airbags go off, they take it.
Speaker 5:It's harder when it looks. It's harder when it looks to back into that real quick.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's one of the very few reasons I'm a big fan of having a little pocket knife on your vest Because you can get them airbags out of your way really quick. So we've unasked. Now we've got to figure out where this guy's at. Look at all the smoke. You might be a little, you know, dazed from the airbags things to consider. So let's see what happens here.
Speaker 6:There we go.
Speaker 1:Never liked running body cam. Oh, we were wielding. Did you see that one? The big use of force, guys, I'm like, oh Lord, um, so uh, vaughn, take it away on dual wielding.
Speaker 4:Well, it's not just dual wielding. I mean, you're going to debate, I, I don't like foot pursuits with any gun out. Uh, by the way, cause the unintended discharge possibility goes way up. But a lot of officers, a lot of officers, will do foot pursuits with gun outs, particularly if they have to cut a lot of corners. Lots of stop and go, stop and go, stop and go, and I get a lot of corners, lots of stop and go, stop and go, stop and go, and I get it. Um, but when you start pulling two out so you have force options, you start get slip and capture possibilities, which means you intend to fire one, you end up firing the other. So dual wielding is bad tactics. It's bad decision making under stress. Uh, it's a. It's not something you would train, but I do understand. People at least rationally think well, if I, if, if I need to go less lethal, I've got this option. If I need to go lethal, I've got this option. But those are from a human performance standpoint, those are just bad ideas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Matt, what about you brother?
Speaker 3:It just shows that that I mean can't blame him. He just had a really adrenaline dump. Uh, he's things are going faster, should be slowing down. Yeah, when you, when you pull both like that, he's it's speeding up for him and, and as any fighter would know, you, you got to slow things down when they, when they get fast. So that's what if I was there?
Speaker 1:relax, relax right, right, bend it out in the neck, get it. I like it. All right, all right. So let's keep going here. Obviously, try to find some cover, the best you can. We're kind of running out in the open, but we're also trying to keep view on this guy in the nighttime. It's hard to do Watch when he turns that corner.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:Slow and controlled baby. Oh, he went in the water. Oh no, all I'm going to say right now is you fucking asshole. That's exactly. I'm not going to lie. If I was on the scene, that's the first thing that would have been out of my mouth, because he knows there's nowhere to go. Why are we doing this? Right, I don't know what state we're in, but if it's Florida, you know there's gators and that crap.
Speaker 1:See what we could do if we had banning, though that doesn't look like a big body of water. If banning jumped in, it would just displace the water enough that we could go get them.
Speaker 3:That's a brilliant move. If you've got guns and drugs, dump it right there in the water. Yeah, you're not wrong.
Speaker 5:I'll just go in there and wrestle the gators. Y'all grab him Right.
Speaker 1:So now we've got to consider how we're going to. Here's all the factors that are going through my head head. Can I see his hands? That's going to be my biggest thing. Hands are what kills us. Can I see his hands? We're going to be challenging him. Everybody's going to be ramped up. I need one voice, so I need somebody to take command. Hey, everybody else, shut the fuck up. Matt's got this. Matt's the one right in front of him. Tell him what you need to do, so somebody needs to help take control, because everybody's going to be chirping and gets around and get around them yeah, um taser and a big body of water.
Speaker 1:I'm not really sure what the uh science is behind that, but it's probably not good no, it's no bueno.
Speaker 4:Plus. I mean at this point, he's an unknown threat. You don't know. If you've got weapons, you don't want to hide behind your front sight. You probably need to be finding a position to cover if you got one. If you don't, you don't Make yourself small. But you covered the other stuff. One voice Slow things down. Start giving clear commands. Taser's not an option in that body of water, at that threat level.
Speaker 2:Right, I have a question. Uh, I have a question, non-leo question okay, what you got do they teach? Look, banning will tell you this was the funniest thing about being a marine. It was when you, when you had the guys who couldn't pass a swim, qual and I'm like dude marine is in the name, the water's in there and and do they make? Uh, they didn't, please. I have like swim qual you guys. Are they just hoping this guy gets in his core fram shoes and just hops out, starts wrestling like?
Speaker 5:steve irwin. What was? Hey, hey, hey, the sad. The sad thing on this is I'm not going to take the, the, the panel away here on this. But when I, when I got in and we got to that SW2, I believe what they call it in swim crawl, a lot of my my brothers said so this is where we learned to swim and I was like oh, where you learned to swim.
Speaker 5:He's like, yeah, man, I'm from Tennessee and I've never even seen the pool, and I'm like, well, you about to see the pool and the pool's about to see you and you're about to be loaded down with gear. There's your fake M16A2 service rifle that you're about to don, and we're about to swim and float for a long time. Are you good with that? And then the drill instructor.
Speaker 2:Make a flotation device out of your trousers.
Speaker 5:Damn right. Yes, and I had a lot of extra in my trousers. Thank you, man.
Speaker 2:We're good. I was just wondering about swim qual for cops. I mean, do they give y'all any opportunity to go to the pool and get laps, or is it just?
Speaker 4:you know popping caps. If you're near a body of water, there's agencies that require boat rescue, beach rescue, swim, but if you're not, no, I knew agencies that require, like boat rescue, beach rescue, swim, but if you're not, no, I knew von would know.
Speaker 1:Von's got four science. All right, I'm gonna address this. Uh comment, I'm not really sure what it's supposed to mean. Eric and the biggest bitch, let me see your hands. Yeah, that's the thing that fucking kills us. And you just rammed our vehicle head on, then fled. It's not things reasonable people do so. Joseph af, um yeah, or joe, joe's, joe's af, whatever your name is. Uh, yeah, that's not sure what you, what you were getting you get to be the biggest bitch.
Speaker 2:I don't appreciate it. We, we had the tape measure out and we proved that adlin is the biggest bitch that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, shirtless too. Nipple the nipple, all right, let's. Let's keep going here, all right. Hands are clear, fairly clear. Looks like he's got some seaweed in there, um, so I, I'm okay with that. Uh, verbal commands try to. You know he's going to be a little tired. He ain't getting too far, but we want to get our distance with that taser. They often fail because we're too close, we don't get enough spread, um, so if that's gonna, if that's about to be used, um, that's what I would be looking at. Uh, I think we got enough people there. I would probably, I, I would probably go hands on here, uh, when he's at his most vulnerable, because he's going to be slow, lethargic, getting out of that water, I don't want to give him a chance to get his momentum going again. Anybody else got anything different von you? Look like a taser guy, you going taser. No, I am not a taser guy, I am much moreer.
Speaker 4:No, I am not a taser guy. I am much more like you in that regard. I didn't like OC and I didn't like tasers. I would prefer to go hands-on. But at this point you could tell him to get on the ground and do a compliance check. We would at least encourage that. Get a compliance check If he's going to do it. He's going to do it.
Speaker 1:If not, lines check if he's going to do it.
Speaker 3:He's going to do it. If not, you can go hands-on, but at least at least give him the opportunity to to comply at this point. Fair matt, you got anything different? No, it looks like he's. I mean, he's working towards complying. This is usually where I tone the yelling down and just like talk to him like a man, like you're not going anywhere. Bro, come on, we want to hurt you, I'm not a killer I'm not a horrible cop.
Speaker 2:I'd make a horrible cop Cause all of y'all have this more figured out than I do, cause I get amped up. Y'all see me talking to the wizard over here. I'm about to lose my shit.
Speaker 3:I can't imagine a son of a bitch.
Speaker 2:Running from me and like backhands me. I might be hunching his leg. I don't know what would happen.
Speaker 1:I think we got a t-. I think we got a t-shirt. I think we got a t-shirt idea for Science Wizard. I love it.
Speaker 4:I don't even know he's talking about me until you comment. I was like oh, who's the wizard? And he was like oh, I'm going to wear a hat next time one of them wizard hats. There you go.
Speaker 2:Well, make sure it's not white, I agree with him, but I find him just attractive and I don't know why I don't blame you.
Speaker 1:You know, Mr.
Speaker 4:Belfort. I started out in the Marine Corps right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, marines, make the best soldiers.
Speaker 1:Point in words.
Speaker 2:My stepfather. Look, my father was a ranger, my grandfather was a ranger. My dad said he'd rather have a daughter and a bordello than a son in the Marine Corps. So at 17, I signed up and was like ha ha, show him you signed up for the bedello for a day.
Speaker 1:You son of a. How did I get me in the word title?
Speaker 2:he fucked me up. I'm gonna go quiet while you cops talk about hold on.
Speaker 1:Brandar just sent up a question, uh, probably one that I really like talking about. Why don't police have yearly PT standards? Most do. Too many cops resorting to belts, tools over hands and skipping hands-on, skipping steps, yeah, yeah, here's the problem. They have a fitness test every year but the biggest, fattest guys can still pass it because it's very low standard PT. That's my opinion. I have a very, I have very spirited words in my brain that I can't say out loud, but I highly disdain police PT. I think we don't take it nearly as serious as we should. But then part of the problem is too you got cops that have been out on the streets for 15, 20 years and they're broke down, busted up. Some of them can't do a lot of the motions and stuff that are required for the PT test. Well then you got that whole side of the house.
Speaker 4:Add to that, eric, there's a lot of really fit cops that are over-reliant on their tools right now. It's not just about fitness, it's about, as you well know, just complete lack of training. So, yeah, there's fat cops who are really great at jujitsu and they're quite capable of going hands-on Kung fu pandas, yeah, and then there's really fit cops who don't train. So it goes both ways.
Speaker 1:They think, because they can bench 300 pounds, that they can handle anything in a fight.
Speaker 4:I think it's cute that you think 300 pounds is a lot of weight.
Speaker 1:Even Matt laughed. On benching. That is a lot of weight You're wrong about me. That's your game.
Speaker 4:I think Matt Banning and I both looked at you like oh, that's cute. He thinks 300 is a big bench press.
Speaker 1:That's adorable 225 is about the max I can get. I cannot bench like that. Y'all are crazy Really. I wouldn't look at you and guess that at all. I know, thank you.
Speaker 5:That's a good bicep workout. 225, 245 plates in the bar.
Speaker 1:You know what? Let's get to the video. We haven't gotten halfway through it, sons of bitches Lay down, lay down, lay down.
Speaker 6:Lay down, lay down.
Speaker 1:Okay, hey man. Move in.
Speaker 2:Nobody beat the shit out of him.
Speaker 1:That's awesome for all those excuses people say. Cops are always looking to just hurt people. This dude rammed their car, then ran from him in the water, which is that's. That's an asshole move, by the way, uh, but I'm glad he got himself out. So he ran in, but he got himself out, so we can.
Speaker 4:We can watch that one clean I think that's why I think matt would agree at some point. You just calm down and you, you, you're just impressed with their commitment. Like the guy was committed, like he's just like a nice try, man, come on out, lay down, that was solid effort and they know that guy was just excited because he knew he was going to have the best, fucking best paperwork ever that night.
Speaker 2:He's just going to have to write. Whoever writes that report out. It's going to be like the backstroke was initiated, subject flailed and had to be grabbed by his fourth point of contact. I mean this is great. That cop knew he didn't have to do shit the rest of the night but type this up.
Speaker 4:I like Brandar 86. Technically they pulled out in front of him.
Speaker 5:That's just right.
Speaker 1:We're taking for sure.
Speaker 5:Don't forget, Mr Belford was driving that car, so he may have some.
Speaker 1:QI he, he has to go after in about 12 months to answer for that and in that into your point, matt, one of the things that I've noticed about myself over the last at least 15 years I don't yell at people, like even when it's an amped up situation. I'm like hey, like I'm taught, like I'm just trying to talk normal, like calm. Um, I, I don't know why that is I, I just don't. I'm not a yeller anymore. I got out of that pretty, pretty quickly in my first few years. I just never really seen the need to start just absolutely screaming at the top of my lungs.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we try to train that out too early. I I mean years and years now. It doesn't ever make sense why, even in training, guys would get amped up and start yelling and screaming and two seconds earlier they were perfectly calm. We call it like they're in the optimal arousal state. They're focused, they're doing good threat assessments and then, when it's time to make contact, they just escalate and they start screaming. I'm like what are you doing? Everything's good. Just talk to the guy, he can hear you. We're still fighting that.
Speaker 3:I always got on my nerves. I was just going to make him run faster. He keeps screaming. I was going to run faster, man yeah.
Speaker 1:It looks like that was the end of that video. Since I put him into custody, I can pull up one more. If y'all want one more, um, let's see, we don't want a long one, though, okay, let's uh, let's go with this guy. Open a new tab. Boom. Oh, slow your roll. Share this tab instead. Biggie size and let's go instead. Biggie size and let's go. Biggie size. Great 64, 5, 3. Wait a minute, thank you. Okay, so right away, the first thing I noticed is we parked down the street. This is typical, standard protocol for dealing with domestics. You never want to park directly in front of the house because we've been ambushed and things of that nature, and this gives you a chance, especially if you do what we call staging. If you're waiting for backup to get there, you'll stage. So, other than that, anything else anybody else notices?
Speaker 2:Where's his backup?
Speaker 1:I think she's talking to him, I think they're together, so she probably parked and he came up. When I say they stayed, you stayed. You wait for your backup to get there and then you go up together. What was the call? What was the original call? We don't have that information. That's part of the fun. We don't look at any of the details, we just watch what we got in front of us and kind of go off of that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's why I did that. There's so many calls that cops have to do the initial assessment by themselves. There isn't going to be a backup. They're just going up to assess the scene. They're going to collect information and they'll advise dispatch if they need another officer there. Typically, if it's non-threatening, you probably aren't going to stage down the block. You might, depending on if it's like an unknown disturbance, call, for example, and you might just call, advise on it, park down the block and then do your assessment as you walk up. But many, many, many of these cases you don't have a back at this stage because nothing in the information triggered it.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, like for us, us, we, we never. If it's a domestic, we don't approach alone and we definitely don't park in front of the house.
Speaker 5:so that's what we we may.
Speaker 5:Even I understand this officer's walking about 12 inches off that curb. Line me just with with some tactical sense. Even if this is a cat in a tree, if there's no traffic, like this road is currently showing, I'm going to be about another 36 to maybe 72 inches out more to the right only because we're able to pie of what's going on. It may be grandmother giving us information. It may be somebody summoning us there to end somebody's life and unfortunately you don't know what that is. We really don't know what this is, but you have to treat every situation as it may go bad really quickly. Um, and just to be safe about it, period.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 5:All right, let's keep going.
Speaker 1:All right. So we had a guy come out and take a shooter stance after saying let me see your hands to that effect. Now this is where we don't want a Monday morning quarterback. So for me I would hope that I would have had the presence of mind to move to cover and not into the open. So Banning you got anything on this?
Speaker 5:No. So where he's at, obviously bad guy knows position and that's bad terminology. Person with a gun that made the stance knows your position. Sometimes you have no choice but to close in that gap and in that threat. So you may have to pendulum, start going to the right and utilizing your vision. While ending that threat, you've got to take in everything that's going in there. Yes, what you're taking about taking about cover. If you were to back that up and look at everything that's on there, you don't have much to take cover on.
Speaker 5:I see a lot of officers that will go house to house and they'll weave on these property lines. First of all, you ain't got no business to be on anybody's property that didn't call. So I have a problem with that when they're walking all up on somebody's house. So we're out there on that public street just like everybody else, and that's what we have to us. If we've got a car that we can go to for taking on fire, great, we've got a car. For a moment, the PD can freaking replace that car if it gets shot.
Speaker 1:If I'm getting shot at everything's on the table In play, absolutely I don't care. I'm on it.
Speaker 5:What I'm speaking about is when you're walking up on a cold scene and it's an unknown. We're not going to utilize people's property walking up and screwing up all their veggies Anyway, I'm getting in the weeds on that but utilize what you have if the shit hits the fan, but also utilize your tactical knowledge when stuff like this happens.
Speaker 1:You have to end that threat.
Speaker 5:Who else has he hurt?
Speaker 1:Right Vaughn, sir, what do you got so?
Speaker 4:far. It's an ambush right, so you either close or you get dis, but you move. If an officer turned around and sprinted back to the first position to cover and didn't even draw their gun, I wouldn't have blamed them. If they would have drew their gun and just started aggressively getting accurate fire on that person, I wouldn't have blamed them like there's no, it's just tactical trade-offs at this point and it's going to be what your training is. If you've been trained to aggressively attack the ambush and and fire through the, that's what you're going to do. So it's just bad all the way around. But yeah, ideally you getting fire on that person as fast as possible or you getting yourself in a position of less vulnerability. But I don't know where the car was and there is not a right answer, there's just a series of bad choices at this point.
Speaker 2:It's bad for everybody. Yeah, I don't know how y'all this is where I tell people that you have to. The reason I give good cops grace is because I would not want to deal with this kind of thing for a job. It's bad enough getting burned while being a welder, not, you know, having to worry about somebody ready to dump on me and my partner. That's just not, you know, I mean.
Speaker 2:This is why I I want us to come together and bridge this gap, because we need good cops, I don't care what anybody says. That's why I want to see good policing, because this is the type of craziness that goes on in the world. And then it gets a lot worse than that and some of us may be able to handle ourselves, but maybe your neighbor can't. You know people. We have high standards and expectations for cops, because we need them, because this is crazy.
Speaker 2:If that guy comes out, you know you got to close with and destroy. I'm sorry, I'm just a jarhead and that's what I know, but you know that guy could come out that front door. Now that citizens outside are all about to have a really bad day because this guy's shooting something sideways, I wouldn't know what to do, and this is I want the people that are watching that hate all cops to realize that there's a lot of bad cops out there, but there's a lot of folks like this who are putting their life on the line because there could be somebody in danger, and we need to give these, these cops, some grace, because this is some scary shit.
Speaker 1:Address this question. Nubs revenge. Eric's admitted to being one that asked for ID on a regular practice but claimed he does not push it. Yeah, so we. So we've. We've addressed this before on here. Um, I'm of the opinion it doesn't hurt to ask. We're information gatherers. That's what police do we get to a scene, try to get as much information as we can so we can do the best job that we can do with whatever report is we got to do, um, or see if there is no report, or whatever. Uh, just to do our due diligence. Um, I don't push it, she's right. Um, I also let people know when it's mandatory and when it's not. Say, hey, can I get your ID? Um, right now it's not required Um, I'm just doing it for information gathering, for for what we're doing, um, but you don't have to give it to me. So I let I let people know. So I think that's fair. But do I think it's wrong to ask? Do I think it's the id crack?
Speaker 2:I see what you're talking about the id crack only comes when, when it gets to that situation of well you know we got a call because somebody called us that we don't know yeah, we have to. The only way for me to figure out exactly what you're doing is to know where you live and know your name.
Speaker 1:If.
Speaker 2:I have that information, I will majorifically understand what's going on here. But I don't have a problem with cops asking because that lets me flex. Y'all see how I am. I'm ready to go with the wizard. If a cop comes up to me and asks me for my ID and say it's Eric Levine, he'd be real nice Like hey, hey, buddy, can I get your ID? I'd be like probably not, but if you, you know, buy me a drink or something we might could make out.
Speaker 2:And then he takes it and that's it. It's over with, thank you. Thank you, officer, for giving me the opportunity to assert my rights and make you look like a ding dong, cause somebody like Eric's going to be like okay, this guy knows what's up, it's fine, I don't mind him asking. It's when you try to press me and violate me for it that we're gonna have an issue, and then I don't answer questions.
Speaker 5:So what you're saying? So what you're saying is I gotta buy you better drinks than what?
Speaker 1:you don't have to do nothing but show up with that speedo on buddy. I'm pretty sure I have the right to my privacy that you swore an oath on every single one of you. Yeah, I did swear an oath. So asking for something if I have not committed a crime is actually committing a crime, kind of Stop, stop stop, stop, stop, stop, stop it.
Speaker 2:Okay, god damn it. All right, sorry guys, excuse me, I'm sorry for taking the Lord's name in vain, but listen here we have to hold these police accountable for violating rights. We cannot majorifically invent that. We have the right not for them to not ask us. We have the right to say no, stop. It's not a crime to ask me. You can ask me.
Speaker 2:When the cops used to harass me because I lived in the project after my house burned down, they thought I was there to get dope, so I couldn't make it 15 yards either direction Either somebody trying to sell me some hard or soft or the police wondering what I'm doing. And I'm gonna tell you the red bandana, bro, yeah. Well, hey, man, I look at me, I'm. I'm a hundred miles a dirty, bumpy, dirt road to go down. But these people, these cops, would ask me sometimes hey, where you coming from? And I'd go that way, where you going, man, man, that way. Then I'd stare at them. Thank you, I mean, I love when a cop gives me the opportunity to exert my rights and stand on it. You know what I'm saying. You guys are getting so bent out of shape. Oh, it's kind of like a crime just asking me. I just want to feel safe. You don't have the right to not be uncomfortable. They don't have the right to violate you, so everybody needs to to come to some middle ground here where we don't hold. I don't give a shit if a cop comes up and asks me for my idea, if I tell him not today.
Speaker 2:Homie, they don't do it out here where I live, because I had one cop do it to me twice and he was new, one of our sheriffs, and I told hank. Our sheriff was like, look, tell your deputy to leave me alone, bro, he don't see me because I don't get in no trouble. But I never had a problem since then. But damn, let them ask who cares? Are you not big enough, grown enough, citizens? Do you not believe in your constitution, enough to have some balls and tell a cop, if you ask for ID, say no. But you know, I give you my mom's recipe for sourdough. I mean, come on and keep it moving. Are y'all that fragile? He asked me. I feel like he really wanted to violate my rights. Meanwhile, there's people whose rights are really being violated and we got to address that. So stop being so damn hypersensitive, holy good.
Speaker 1:God Sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm out of my soapbox brother.
Speaker 1:Let's keep going Shooting and moving. I like it Shooting and moving. Good for her engaging. There we go. Oh lord, that is a shit show. There's no right answer. They were you got a shooter on the move. I think they did really great using that truck and then that dude popped out from around the corner and they dealt with it the best way that they could. I don't see that I would have done anything different in their position Banning what do you got?
Speaker 5:I don't have anything right now. Okay, I just go to the next.
Speaker 3:That's just a good old-fashioned game of freeze tag. Yeah, that's a terrible scenario. Terrible, terrible position to be in Vaughn.
Speaker 4:The one thing I noticed was, if you play it back, he's got both hands in the air as he's running away with this For like a brief second yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it looks like he's doing a surrender, like an evidence of surrender exactly. Police are trained to recognize what are called tactical feints or, you know, fake surrenders sort of thing, which is why sometimes people will say I give up. I give up, or how that hurts or I can't breathe. All these things are efforts to gain a tactical advantage, in this case a what looks like a really clear example of faking surrender to gain a tactical advantage. And then you see how quickly from a human performance standpoint, having your hands up in the air to firing that gun is about a 10th of a second. That's fastest. On average it's a quarter of a second. But just because someone has their hands up with a gun in, if they're not actively surrendering in that moment, they are still an imminent threat. It doesn't mean you have to shoot them, but it means the law still allows you to.
Speaker 1:Right, Acorn Magdum said, but she took cover behind her partner. I don't see her taking cover behind her partner. I see her. Either her gun was down or she was trying to get in a position. So he didn't swing because look where the bad guy ran he's running across causing a crossfire amongst the officers play that again, eric, when when he pulls out in front of the truck.
Speaker 1:Okay I want you to see where, where they both ran, he ran to create a crossfire. I don't think he did that intentionally, but, um, he ran and created a crossfire and I see that she dipped down in behind her partner, I think, to get on a level shooting field, so he wasn't shooting over her head or over her shoulder. So, boom, they're both lined up right now. The other officer that's to the left probably doesn't have a very good shooting lane right now because that guy's running around the truck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's about to be right in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so she's got the best line of sight right now, because that guy's running around the truck, yeah, so she's got the best line of sight right now. I think she shoots trying. So now she's coming back and getting online with her partner because I think her guns, I think her guns down. So, um, just just my opinion here, but I think she did a good move here. So let's keep going. Yeah, her gun's down. Now she's getting covered. She's a lefty, that's her problem.
Speaker 5:Well so so correct me if I'm wrong, but her gun was out of battery. We're not doing an admin load, we're not doing a frigging attack reload and that's and that's muscle memory. And I know Bill Folk can come right up in here with basic training as a rifleman and come right in this and the shit meter is going off in the head.
Speaker 1:He said it took him three times to get pistol-clawed so far. I mean there's no pretty thing in this. This is never pretty, so to me as a citizen.
Speaker 2:What's what's the most bothersome is the person put his hands up and it looked like and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong it looks like he put his hands up in the air and immediately dropped down the fire. I mean, what are you supposed to do with that?
Speaker 2:I mean on bond probably deals with this a lot more in his cases and he would see a lot more of that and no but that the like. When you talk about the mixed signals from multiple people talking to a suspect, I also gotta think what I mean. If I think you've got your hands up, I might you know that woman. She had a line of sight on him. Maybe she didn't drop him because he had his hands up and then he dropped him back down like was it tactical faint von uh, tactical fainted him that I don't know how they didn't drop him earlier. I'm not even trying to be funny, but like this guy, this guy was a problem. I don't, I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1:It's hard to shoot a moving target, I promise you that I couldn't do it. That's why I like shotguns yeah, now I'm glad they got red dots, cause that significantly helps you. If you, if you've been trained in them, it helps me so.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty nasty with a slingshot, though.
Speaker 1:Give me a ball bearing man, I'll pop that We'll start calling you, david, but you know, and we don't know if the suspect's here or not, that's another thing. We shoot when you shoot paper targets there. Know if the suspect's here or not, that's another thing. We shoot when you shoot paper targets. There's a difference. When we shoot paper targets, you get that instant recognition that you hit your target because you can see the hole. Uh, it doesn't work that way. When you're shooting the human body that's wearing clothing um, you may get lucky and they're wearing a bright white shirt and you happen to hit a spot where a bunch of blood decides to come out, but that's not typically the case. You have to shoot and keep shooting based on behavior. Vaughn, you got anything to add on that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, just there's two massive things fighting each other. I know I'm reading a lot of the comments I heard not being accurate. The other officer wasn't being accurate either. But your body is fighting every desire to get out of there and survive right While simultaneously having to hold your position and assess something that's trying to kill you. Those are very difficult things. So to shoot accurately, to find that site, to actually steady yourself, to get that to stop, and steady yourself when somebody's shooting at you, is a very difficult thing to discipline yourself to do right. So I, I I never can account for sometimes officers on a run or suspects on a run will just shoot and hit, hit something right away.
Speaker 2:But it doesn't surprise me that these guys are missing when their body is fighting every instinct to not be there yeah, there was only one instance it looked like to me when that person had his hands up and kind of crossed his feet to like step over. He was walking sideways. That was the slowest that he got. Other than that, that son of a gun was like looping and I mean I wouldn't have been able to hit him. I ain't gonna lie, I'd have to run up on him and just tried to shoot him point blank.
Speaker 5:I'm not playing with him. I'm going to just add this in there on a humanistic standpoint, it doesn't matter how much you train, once you have rounds coming down range at you. It takes a specific type of person to be able to categorize that in your brain, in your heart, and return rounds to end that threat. And people can argue with me all day long, but until you've had that happen, to you it's a different type of thought process period.
Speaker 1:Yep, alright, let's keep going here and see how this ends up. I'm hit.
Speaker 3:I'm hit. Oh, he's down Fuck.
Speaker 1:Okay, now this is where we can see the adrenaline and not thinking clearly. The suspect's down. Her partner has got security. Right now she needs to take care of herself. She's still got her gun out. She's still trying to figure out where she's hit Like. This is what we're trying to get to. It doesn't matter how much you train until you go through this.
Speaker 2:But Eric, how in the hell can you train this man being fair to her? I mean shit. Maybe she thinks there's another dude hanging out there ready to dump on her. She just had somebody dump on her. I mean, as much as I want to hold cops accountable, I can't criticize this woman, because what do you do?
Speaker 1:What do woman? Because what?
Speaker 5:yeah, what do you do? What do you do when y'all armchair that one?
Speaker 4:for me, is her gun, is her gun cracked too.
Speaker 1:Do you guys see that? Um, it might just be the grip. It might yeah, because it's smooth. Yep, you're right. I was like my God her gun got cracked. I thought maybe it got shot.
Speaker 5:You're such a gun nerd. She's got a TLR-1 and she's got an Amazon aftermarket grip on there.
Speaker 2:She got the T-MU grip.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden, Banner's in front of the sun. What happened there, buddy?
Speaker 5:I decided to get bright in one time in my life. Alright, let's keep going.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to get bright in one time in my life it's all right. Oh shit, all right, let's keep going. I'll pull my training kit out, okay, what's up, bro? You're making me nervous. There we go.
Speaker 2:Yes, turn to get the leg, thank God, I was screaming inside.
Speaker 3:Is that where she got hit the leg? Fucking hell.
Speaker 2:It's all right little mom oh what you got, eric? Oh shit, eric spotted something.
Speaker 1:What you got. Stay off the fucking radio In a gun fight.
Speaker 5:Do work, do work, go home, then communicate, eric you don't need to not drink on these streams.
Speaker 2:Do work, go home, then communicate. Eric, you don't need to not drink on these streams because you get real seriously pissed about that when you're not drinking he ain't drinking tonight, your partner's in a gunfight.
Speaker 6:And you're not in it.
Speaker 2:He's more cool when he's drinking. Right now he's just like God. How many times have I said it Don't be on the radio, let's get these handles.
Speaker 1:Your partner was in a gunfight and you were trying to get out on the radio. You didn't have rounds getting sent down, rage, you just let her sit out there and fucking. Okay, corral it by herself, that is. We would have had fucking words after this. Major words Stay off the radio, handle business and then get the information out. I don't understand where this training is coming from, but it happens so much. I see it all the time. Stay off the fucking radio. Stay off the fucking radio, shit.
Speaker 4:It's partly not training, though. There's a biological imperative. They feel alone, they feel overwhelmed and they want somebody to know and they want to get people there. You see it in all these cases and they won't remember even doing it. It's like in the middle of a fight. We get people on the radio calling for backs because they feel like I'm alone at the worst possible time of my life and everything is. I need help. I want someone to get here. I want to know I've got help coming. But you're 100% right. It's the first thing I thought too was get in that fight. You are the backup. This is, this is where we we've got two officers there already.
Speaker 4:We see it mostly when it's a single officer in the fight and they're not prioritizing life, they're prioritizing comms and there's an imperative to do that. This guy needed to realize he was the back, but even at that I don't want to be too critical. I don't know how long it took him, whether he did it while moving to a position to cover, uh fine, whatever. But your points well taken. We see that. But it's really, even with training, you're still going to see the body's imperative. Overcome that training. Yeah, because you're just at the worst point in your life and you want friends there, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, it makes me wonder how many times he's been in that situation because, just as just me personally, it would seem to me like I'll get on the radio after I'm done shooting at the person, shooting at my person. You know the idea of grabbing my radio. Y'all are gonna find out that. That one second I spent getting on the radio, 13 got it. No man, my partner's getting shot at, we're dumping, we're humping, but we're not getting on the radio. It wouldn't even I wouldn't even think of that. I'm called just like I do with police. Now I'll call you after I'm done shoot I like it.
Speaker 1:I like it, matt, you got anything, brother? Oh, he's dealing with a dog or something, all right.
Speaker 2:Give me one second. I got a cat over here trying to bring me a baby.
Speaker 1:That is not the guy. I expected to have cats. No, let's keep going Put the gun down. All right, she's out. He's moving the cover. I like it let it down. He's trying beautiful. He kept moving, he communicated he's moving around. Uh, I think he knew his gun was close to being empty. I think he was really concerned about that, which is hard to think of in a gunfight, so I'm glad he was doing that. Let's keep going.
Speaker 2:Put it down.
Speaker 1:And that's what we call suicide by car.
Speaker 5:We got it right there and I don't know if it's the registered owner of this truck, but this guy may have been going through a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, DV plates.
Speaker 5:It's a disabled vet plate and unfortunately, our mental health is ridiculous in this country right now.
Speaker 1:All right, all right. Well, that is all done. I want to make sure we are able to say goodbye to Vaughn. Vaughn's got his batteries are dying in his headset. I don't even know if he can hear us right now. Can you hear us?
Speaker 4:Well, I can hear you. I just got a warning saying charge me now. It wasn't, because it wasn't Mr Bill for it. I'm assuming it was the head headset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, guys, this has been a fun episode. I had a lot of fun on this one, even though the first two hours was just watching.
Speaker 5:From two cops to everybody watching. Thanks, yvonne, mr Belfold, matt Eric I mean everybody that came in here and is putting their comments up, taking time out of your life for this important subject. Did we answer everybody's questions? No, it doesn't matter. We could talk about this till six o'clock in the morning. We're not going to answer everybody's questions, but we know there's an issue there and we will come back and probably revisit this in the future. Thank you all so much for coming.
Speaker 2:I just want to ask all the people who aren't law enforcement, who are like me every week I'm in that chat with you, I'm not on this screen Come prepared, come with an open heart and hold these cops accountable. We can do better than just attacks and being nasty. These guys listen to us. You want to go to other cop channels and get banned and kicked and stuff and act stupid. That's fine, but please, we don't want that. We want to talk. Y'all need to be heard. You're going to be heard here. So come here and talk with us. All Matt's people, anybody else, come and talk with us. If we don't agree, we won't agree.
Speaker 2:But please, you guys like the stream if you want to give it uh, you know the channel a subscribe. We want y'all here, because without this, conversation.
Speaker 1:Nothing is going to change. It looks like our stream got pulled. Yeah, because we're too sexy. Anyway, all right, von you got any parting words, sir?
Speaker 4:no, thank you guys for the invitation. Mr bill, you mean mean man, this. This was great. I appreciate it. I appreciate all the homework everybody did to be in this conversation. Look forward to joining you guys more on the next ones. And this is a great, great forum. You guys got going here and you guys got great relationships with your, with your chat chat box Pretty, pretty, pretty entertaining comments going on in there, but you can tell a lot of people are paying attention. So hey, matt, great to meet you nice to meet you too, brother.
Speaker 3:A lot of respect and love for you, brother well, you know getting your next shooting.
Speaker 4:Give me a call yeah, I saw it Banning alright, gentlemen, I appreciate you oh, we got banned for YouTube, was it?
Speaker 2:oh, it was the gunshots I bet.
Speaker 1:All right, everybody, we're going to try to figure that out. But everybody else, thanks. Have a good night.
Speaker 5:Y'all stay here, love y'all, bye.
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