“Can I sue a police officer”? That is a question that is asked on a daily basis around the country for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, the answer is “no” for most people who are left unhappy or even wronged in some way after contact with police. That is not to suggest that it is impossible to sue an individual police officer, just that in most situations one cannot routinely sue a cop and use the civil courts against him or her.
Police officers are threatened with lawsuits on a daily basis by disgruntled citizens as officers routinely carry out their jobs. In most instances, the threats are levied by people who have a basic misunderstanding of the powers and responsibilities granted to police officers in order to perform their tasks. In other major situations, tragic mishaps may occur after a police officer has made a mistake, which puts civil litigation on the table. In either situation, police officers are shielded from being personally sued as long as the police officer was acting in accordance to the laws and regulations in his or her State.
In other words, police officers are immune to civil lawsuits while legally acting and exercising their lawful powers. This immunity to lawsuits is often called “Qualified Immunity” or some variation of it depending on the State. Police officers are afforded Qualified Immunity, similarly in the same way a judge is granted immunity from lawsuits. Police officers must be free to enforce laws, arrest individuals, use necessary force when warranted or in worst case scenarios, take the life of a person. The police, who place themselves in situations to serve the greater public, must be able to conduct their work without fear of being taken to civil court and possibly being held financially liable for any negative event which could potentially destroy their own personal lives. That is why they are shielded from lawsuits.
The reasoning is simple. If police officers were not afforded immunity, communities would be without police officers or at least lacking competent, professional, mentally stable and educated individuals willing to perform the job. It is a well known fact that the job of police officer comes with inherent risks. Police officers are expected to go into dangerous situations to serve the greater good of their communities and as such, they often are required to make quick decisions, sometimes involving life and death both for themselves and for others. If something unfortunate occurs while a police officer is acting on behalf of his community, through Qualified Immunity, the officer is protected from being sued. Without such a protection, sane individuals would never volunteer themselves to become police officers or simply put, cops would refuse to place themselves into dangerous situations and communities would suffer.
On more routine encounters, cops use terms such as reasonable suspicion and probable cause in order to stop, detain, investigate crimes and arrest people. People and police officers will always have conflict in the way that the two groups interact with one another due to the nature of the objectives of the police. As long as police are justifiably using their powers while detaining, searching, investigating crimes and arresting people, they cannot be sued for doing so, no matter how unhappy a person may become or how that person perceives or believes that they were unfairly treated.
Under What Circumstances Can A Police Officer Be Sued?
So when can a police officer be sued? A police officer can be sued and held personally liable when the police officer does something that it is outside of his or her authority which affects a citizen. Those deviations typically would include behavior on the officer’s part such as recklessness, negligence or an outright breaking of the law that the officer is not entitled to do. In extreme instances, not only would such a police officer lose immunity to civil lawsuits, it would also be likely that the officer would be fired from his or her job and would also be criminally prosecuted.
An extreme example of such a case would be a police officer driving 120 mph on the interstate without lights and sirens on his way to meet another officer for a lunch break. The officer causes a traffic accident resulting in the death of a citizen. In this example, the officer has acted recklessly, negligently and has broken laws without legitimate cause to do so. The officer in this scenario, would be fired, most likely criminally prosecuted and would lose civil suit immunity.
Other times when a police officer can be successfully sued or at least taken to court, include instances where the officer and the plaintiff tell very different stories surrounding a significant event and many important questions exist that cannot be answered through evidence, witnesses, technology, regulations, laws or procedures preliminarily in the officer’s favor. In such a case, if a plaintiff were to provide significant evidence as to the reckless, negligent or unreasonable wrong-doing of an officer that the officer cannot satisfactorily counter, a judge may waive the officer’s immunity status and allow a civil trial where a jury can hear the facts from both sides and then ultimately decide the outcome.
Suing a police officer is unlike suing any other private person where you simply file the lawsuit papers with a court. You must first obtain permission to actually sue a police officer. If you want to sue a cop for some reason, before the suit is valid, a judge must first determine if the police officer is granted immunity based on the circumstances. If a judge decides that the officer is immune, then the lawsuit is thrown out of civil court and nothing more will occur. -That happens in the vast number of lawsuit attempts. If a judge decides that based on the circumstances that the officer is without immunity, then and only then can a civil suit and possible trial follow.
It is important to understand that in most instances it will not be possible to sue a cop personally. That does not mean that you cannot sue his or her agency and the government that employs the officer. Officers, as individuals, are allowed to make reasonable mistakes because mistakes will happen in their profession no matter how hard they attempt to avoid them. As long as the mistakes are reasonable ones and are within the scope of lawful duty, then the officer is protected. However, suing the officer’s agency may be the way to go about remedying a situation if you find yourself legitimately wronged and need to sue.