Lawmakers in the state House of Representative voted this morning on an amendment to a police accountability bill that would have kept qualified immunty for officers and it has failed.
There are mixed feelings about various parts of the bill and police officers appeared to uniformly oppose a provision that would change immunity protections for police in some circumstances for violating someone’s civil rights.
One portion of the bill is to ban “qualified immunity,” making officers personally and legally liable for their actions.
Police say it would be too expensive to have a lawyer on retainer to fight every claim in court.
Lawmakers this morning voted on an amendment that would remove the ban and keep qualified immunity, which protects individual officers from civil lawsuits. The amendment failed after lawmakers voted in a tie at 72-72.
The bill also includes implicit bias training .
Also, many officers complained they felt unfairly targeted because of the actions of the officers in Minneapolis, who killed Floyd, and other “bad cops” across the country.
