By: Hellen Zaboulani
Eric Adams, New York City’s top candidate for Mayor in November’s general election, said on Sunday that police officers who follow their department’s rules should be shielded from lawsuits for actions while on the job — except for “reckless” conduct such as the killing of George Floyd. “I support it with an asterisk,” Adams said on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’, when asked his position on a potential federal law on qualified immunity. Qualified immunity would shield government officials including cops from being personally liable in civil suits while on the job, if they did not break the law. Democrats in Congress are considering repealing it in their police reform bill.
As reported by the NY Post, Adams, currently the Brooklyn borough president, said that if an officer follows the rules, civilians should not be able reap monetary damages from them. “I don’t believe a police officer who’s carrying out his job within the manner in which he was trained to do so should be open to a lawsuit,” he said Sunday. “If he’s chasing an armed person who’s discharging a weapon, and that police officer discharges his weapon and an innocent person is struck by that weapon, we should not have that officer open to a lawsuit.”
Still, Adams said he supports a federal repeal of a law that exempts police officers from civil liabilities when they are out of line, he added that there should not be exemptions when an officer is “reckless”, like in the infamous case of former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin. “When you look at the Floyd case, when clearly the officer went beyond his scope of responsibility, that officer should be open to a lawsuit,” Adams explained. “So I don’t believe we should be suing officers who are doing their job, and some of the hazards of that job, but those who step outside those boundaries, and recklessly carry an act that causes [loss of] life, a serious injury, they should be open to being sued, personally.”
On Sunday morning’s interview with CNN, Adams also touched on other topics. He lauded President Joe Biden for addressing everyday gun violence inflicted by people in predominantly black cities using hand guns, as opposed to assault rifles used for rarer mass shootings. “It took this president to state that it is time for us to stop ignoring what is happening in the South Side of Chicagos, in the Brownsvilles, in the Atlantas of our country.”
