When people argue about police accountability, one term keeps getting mixed up on purpose: qualified immunity.
We are told that if qualified immunity is limited or ended, police officers will be unable to do their jobs. That they will hesitate. That they will be personally ruined for doing honest work.
That claim is false. And it depends on pretending that qualified immunity and absolute immunity are the same thing. They are not.
Absolute immunity is rare and narrow. Judges have it so they can rule without fear of being sued. Legislators have it so they can debate and vote freely. Prosecutors have it only when acting as courtroom advocates, not when they investigate or fabricate evidence. These protections exist to protect democracy itself, not individuals from bad conduct.
Qualified immunity was never meant to work that way.
Congress gave Americans the right to sue government officials for civil-rights violations in 1871. Qualified immunity was later created by courts, not lawmakers, to protect officials who made reasonable mistakes in unclear situations. It was supposed to be limited and practical.
Over time, it grew into something else entirely.
Today, even when a court believes an officer used excessive force, the case can still be thrown out unless the victim can point to an earlier case with almost the exact same facts. If no such case exists, immunity applies. Often, courts then refuse to even rule on whether the conduct was unconstitutional.
That creates a loop. The law never becomes “clearly established” because courts avoid clearly establishing it. Misconduct gets excused, not because it was reasonable, but because it was new.
That is not caution. It is avoidance.
During my 35 years in law enforcement, I never made decisions by thinking about court cases or legal loopholes. Officers act based on training, policy, supervision and judgment. We are taught what force is reasonable and what conduct crosses the line. Qualified immunity does not factor into real-time decisions on the street, no matter how often that claim is repeated.
Where qualified immunity does matter is after the incident.
When cases are dismissed before discovery, agencies avoid depositions, document releases and public scrutiny. Poor training stays hidden. Patterns of misconduct are never exposed. Leaders are never forced to explain their decisions. The system is protected, even when the individual action was wrong.
Limiting qualified immunity does not mean officers lose all protection. Plaintiffs would still have to prove a constitutional violation. Juries would still decide what was reasonable. Honest mistakes made in good faith would still be defensible.
What would change is this: Serious misconduct would no longer be dismissed simply because no one had done the exact same thing before.
Absolute immunity exists to protect essential democratic functions. Qualified immunity was never meant to guarantee immunity from accountability.
If we want to rebuild trust in policing, we need to draw that line clearly again. Accountability is not anti-police. It supports better training, stronger leadership and safer communities. Any profession with life-and-death authority must be willing to confront its worst failures, not hide them.
We cannot fix what we refuse to examine. And we cannot examine what the law blocks us from seeing.
Myers is a former commander and a 33-year veteran of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.
