
Please try to imagine this scene. It’s the middle of a hot summer day in Georgia. A mom named Amy Corbett is inside, and her kids are outside, playing. Suddenly — through no fault of her own and through no fault of her children — police officers are swarming all over her property. They are in the process of apprehending a criminal suspect she doesn’t know, and they’re very aggressive in securing the location. They order all the children to lie down, and at least four of the kids are held at gunpoint. Soon the criminal suspect is in custody, “visibly unarmed,” and complying with officers’ orders.
At that moment, the family dog, Bruce, approaches the officers. There is no indication that he is threatening, and no officer tries to control him by peaceful means. Instead, one officer — a man by the name of Michael Vickers — opens fire. He aims a single shot at Bruce and misses. Bruce retreats briefly and then comes back.
The officer fires again, and misses Bruce again. But he hits Corbett’s ten-year-old son in the knee. Bullet fragments remain in the knee “for an extended period of time after the shooting,” and the young boy suffers “severe pain and trauma.”
Here’s perhaps the most astounding fact: The officer fired when the boy was only 18 inches away. What an astonishingly reckless and unreasonable use of a firearm. So the boy’s family sued. They lost. The reason? An unjust doctrine called “qualified immunity.”
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