It seems to me we have to fix all of these things. QI has to be disestablished as a legal doctrine or at least curtailed to be in line with how other professions get treated in good-faith doctrine. The Congress has to act to establish federal police use of force standards, require the DOJ to enforce them, strip police of military assets, and outlaw police union action on use of force matters and related disciplinary actions. And the states have to act to provide independent internal affairs prosecutors who (as you mention) don't hold a conflict of interest any time they pursue criminal charges against police.
Maybe in this case the SC acted in a calculated way to spur the Congress to act and allow it to be scrutinized in an election year, or felt the case was otherwise unsuitable. But the SC will have to face QI later anyway. The Thomas dissent (https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/061520zor_f2..., search for "Baxter") lays out the reasons why.
QI protects officers from their personal actions. So QI is nothing like the limited liability provided by forming a corporaton or llc.
Here's one example case, which the Supreme Court just declined to hear: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-679/123466/2019...
> Officer Vickers and several other police officers pursued a criminal suspect into Amy Corbitt’s yard. Six children, including Corbitt’s ten-year-old son, SDC, were at play. Vickers and his fellow officers ordered the children—at gunpoint—to lie on the ground, face-down. The children complied. Meanwhile, the unarmed criminal suspect was readily compliant with the officers.
> While holding the children on the ground, weapons drawn, Vickers fired his gun twice at Corbitt’s pet dog. He missed the dog both times. The second time he fired, Vickers shot SDC in the back of the knee, seriously injuring him. SDC, still lying face down on the ground at Vickers’ order, was eighteen inches away from Vickers.
> Corbitt filed this suit, alleging that Vickers violated SDC’s constitutional rights. In particular, Corbitt alleged that, because Vickers faced no threat, his use of deadly force was unreasonable. Vickers sought dismissal, asserting qualified immunity. The district court denied Vickers’ motion, and Vickers took an interlocutory appeal. The Eleventh Circuit, holding that the plaintiff is obligated to plead around qualified immunity, concluded that the complaint failed to establish that qualified immunity is inapplicable.
Note that these are the facts as described by the court itself, not the petitioner's lawyers. Since there is no case on the record establishing that these exact actions are unconstitutional, qualified immunity means the court must assume the officer was acting in good faith and didn't know that shooting at children and a pet dog for no reason is wrong.
Edit - Here's another one of the cases the court just declined to hear: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-899/128836/2020...
> QUESTION PRESENTED
> Whether an officer who has consent to “get inside” a house but instead destroys it from the outside is entitled to qualified immunity in the absence of precisely factually on-point caselaw.
I encourage you to read the case, but basically, the petitioner gave the police her keys and consent to go into her house to look for a suspect (after being threatened with arrest for "harboring a fugitive"). Instead, the police bombarded the house with tear gas grenades, destroying it and almost everything inside. The suspect was not there, and the police did not have any reason to believe he was. The petitioner and her children were homeless for two months, and were offered a hotel room for 3 weeks and $900 as compensation.
> The panel majority found that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity on the scope-of-consent question because “no Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit case clearly established, as of August 2014, that Defendants exceeded the scope of consent” when they took West’s permission to “get inside” her house as permission to bombard and destroy it. App. 13. After all, the majority reasoned, the officers “did ‘get inside’ [her] house, first with objects and later with people.” Ibid.
If you can basically do whatever you want with no repercussions, it's no wonder.
> “Qualified immunity means that government officials can get away with violating your rights as long as they violate them in a way nobody thought of before,” said IJ Attorney Joshua Windham.
https://ij.org/press-release/institute-for-justice-asks-u-s-...
So perhaps instead of abusing civil law for that, there should be a way for private prosecution of criminal law?