Guest Opinion by John C. White
Our law enforcement personnel face threats from all sides. I saw this firsthand both as police officer starting in 1973, ultimately retiring as the Chief of Police for Dothan, Alabama, and as a lawyer currently in private practice representing today’s first responders. It isn’t just threats from criminals on the street. Law enforcement also faces a radical left that is trying to defund our police and impose personal liability on officers for their actions in the line of duty, threatening personal bankruptcy to force compliance with the Left’s demands.
Thankfully, for the time that I served as Dothan’s Chief of Police, our law enforcement was protected not only by the Department of Justice which resembled President Trumps, but also by qualified immunity under state laws across the country, including in Alabama. In Alabama, and elsewhere, this immunity offered essentially categorical protection when radicals, criminals, activists, and others tried to bankrupt an officer personally for actions related to their jobs. Qualified immunity is a cop’s best friend, which is perhaps why the radicals at the ACLU have made abolishing qualified immunity one of their promotional campaigns, alongside pushing for catch-and-release bail policies and defunding the police…