Police killing of Tyre Nichols spurs anger and heartbreak

The Supreme Court has Nichols’ blood on its hands

The reason cops are bold enough to commit murder on camera is because of something called “qualified immunity,” which shields officers from being sued individually unless it can be proved they violated clearly established law. Qualified immunity in essence allows cops to shoot, choke and beat people to death. In other words, they can effectively act like contracted hit men because the Supreme Court of the United States has given them a license to kill (“Every officer in the country should be required to watch the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols,” Jan. 30).

You know it has to be bad when even a dispassionate conservative like Justice Clarence Thomas has a problem with it. After the Supreme Court declined to take up any of the cases before it last year challenging qualified immunity, “Clarence Thomas signaled that he disagreed with the decision not to reconsider qualified immunity. He wrote a brief dissent arguing that the Court should return to an earlier, narrower understanding of when government officials should be immune from civil rights lawsuits,” according to Vox.

Yes, there are those rare occasions when officers actually get charged with murder, as in the case of Tyre Nichols. But that’s like closing the barn door after the horses are gone. No matter how severe the punishment is for those five former police officers, if there is any, it won’t bring Tyre Nichols back.

The court should have put the police in check so that they think twice before murdering another human being in cold blood. SCOTUS has the blood of Tyre Nichols on its hands, and that of thousands of others. And it will continue to do so until the protective covering of “qualified immunity” is removed from the legalized hit squad in this country calling themselves police officers.