The "qualified immunity" doctrine basically means that government officials are immune from personal liability for harm they cause in the course of carrying out their official duties. Eliminating qualified immunity would go a long way to reducing police/government abuse.
"Minneapolis is burning, and it's important to understand why and who's responsible. A large measure of blame goes to the Supreme Court, which has imposed on America a judicially invented policy of near-zero accountability for law enforcement that it steadfastly refuses to reconsider. Enough already.
...
Among qualified immunity’s most pernicious effects is the way it appears to provide a judicial imprimatur for indisputably wrongful conduct, like bringing the full weight of one’s body to bear on the neck of a prone and helpless human being. Indeed, the Supreme Court recently let stand an Eighth Circuit decision dismissing, on qualified immunity grounds, a Section 1983 case against a Nebraska officer who picked up a five‐foot‐tall, unarmed woman clad only in a bathing suit and drove her head‐first into the ground, knocking her unconscious and breaking her collarbone—not because it was lawful for him to do so, but rather because there happened to be no case on point with precisely those facts."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/14/what-is-qualified-immunity-and-how-does-it-work/
https://www.cato.org/blog/officer-involved-killing-george-floyd?&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany
"Minneapolis is burning, and it's important to understand why and who's responsible. A large measure of blame goes to the Supreme Court, which has imposed on America a judicially invented policy of near-zero accountability for law enforcement that it steadfastly refuses to reconsider. Enough already.
...
Among qualified immunity’s most pernicious effects is the way it appears to provide a judicial imprimatur for indisputably wrongful conduct, like bringing the full weight of one’s body to bear on the neck of a prone and helpless human being. Indeed, the Supreme Court recently let stand an Eighth Circuit decision dismissing, on qualified immunity grounds, a Section 1983 case against a Nebraska officer who picked up a five‐foot‐tall, unarmed woman clad only in a bathing suit and drove her head‐first into the ground, knocking her unconscious and breaking her collarbone—not because it was lawful for him to do so, but rather because there happened to be no case on point with precisely those facts."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/14/what-is-qualified-immunity-and-how-does-it-work/
https://www.cato.org/blog/officer-involved-killing-george-floyd?&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany