Wednesday, Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) warned of consequences if qualified immunity were ended for law enforcement during an appearance on the Fox Business Network.
Braun explained to host Maria Bartiromo there was a middle ground to be reached on liability and the job of policing. However, he told how the absolute dissolution of qualified immunity would result in fewer people seeking out a career in a potentially hazardous occupation.
“I look at this in running a company for 37 years before I became a senator, every business has inherent liabilities to what they do,” Braun said. “And the business of law enforcement has got to be one of the most difficult and tricky ones out there because you suit up, your life is at risk every day, you never know what’s going to happen. But when you evolve through the judicial review that’s kind of protected unions to be able to maybe not have that accountability and transparency, you do not want your entity to be stigmatized by cases of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks.”
“And when you get to the point where that’s kind of the emblem of what you do, you’ve got to make tough decisions,” he continued. And nobody should want to have no accountability or not have ability to redress it and you need to change procedures and protocols that fix it. And, you know, my idea is, if you do not at least talk about it, put a template out there, you’re going to end up having something where a year or two down the road political winds change, it gets eliminated, and that would make that job — you’d have mass exodus from people going into law enforcement. So it’s a tricky balance between accepting some accountability, getting rid of those horrific incidents and, you know, rebuild what is so good about law enforcement because they do such a good job in general.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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