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Comment by parineum | Hacker News Reader

Just like "Stand Your Ground" and "Castle Doctrine", people learned a new legal buzzword and think it applies to every story in the news.

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In this very article the police department argued that taking a laptop and not entering it into evidence is protected by qualified immunity. People think that qualified immunity applies to every story in the news because the police argue that it does and the courts typically agree. I will be interested to see the outcome of this case - my expectation is that the court will rule that the police officer cannot be personally sued in this case, because of qualified immunity.

Theft is a criminal offense as well. The officer can be prosecuted for that.

Qualified immunity also applies to the officer who individually. The department can be sued still.

My point is simply that you suggested that qualified immunity doesn't apply to this case, and I agree that it should not in principle but my understanding of the case law is that it typically does.

People talk about qualified immunity like it means a police officer is above the law. That's not true at all. When qualified immunity is working correctly, all it does is shift the liability from the individual to a higher authority (the department/city/state/etc).

In this case, it doesn't apply because theft isn't part of an officer's regular duties. You can't sue an officer for taking your laptop and putting it in evidence. You can sue an officer for taking your laptop home.

And it only shifts civil liability. The officer is still (according to the law if not actual practice) criminally culpable for illegal acts they perform.

> You can sue an officer for taking your laptop home.

Again, I agree with you that this should be true in principle, but I don't have faith that it will apply in this case, and this is contrary to the stated position of the police department.

> When qualified immunity is working correctly…

When is this exactly? 52 years on this planet and am yet to witness this event… :)

They don't write news stories about dogs biting men.

Normal people are prosecuted for theft when they steal things like that. Qualified immunity doesn't cover that. This officer probably won't be prosecuted, but it's nothing to do with qualified immunity.

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