[Jtsummers]

I don't know what you're responding to, but I don't think it's my comment.

Qualified immunity protects individuals, not departments, from liability.

The particular thread (in this thread) that I was responding to:

>> I hope she wrings at least several million dollars out of the government.

> With all the lovely qualified immunity doctrine? That's wishful thinking.

I was responding to the claim that qualified immunity protected the government, it does not.

[kelnos]

The GP seems to be suggesting that there's no recourse at all, usually. You might bring suit against a police department or LE agency, but you'll fail to find any relief there. True that qualified immunity only protects individuals, but there's a raft of other things that makes it hard to get a judgement against a police department, too.

I think there's probably one major exception: civil rights violation investigations. But even then, the people doing the investigating seem to be biased toward the LEOs.

The GP's linked article doesn't seem to even talk about this, so not sure why that's there.

[dolebirchwood]

> You might bring suit against a police department or LE agency, but you'll fail to find any relief there.

I don't know if I'd go so far to say she won't find any relief, but it probably still could be a pretty tough Monell claim against the department (although it's hard to tell from the sparse details in the article):

"[A] local government may not be sued under [42 U.S.C.] § 1983 for an injury inflicted solely by its employees or agents. Instead, it is when execution of a government's policy or custom, whether made by its lawmakers or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy, inflicts the injury that the government, as an entity, is responsible under § 1983." [1]

I could see a problem if there was a policy/custom of relying on AI facial recognition alone without any other corroborating evidence (would be a really stupid practice, but I'm sure stupider things have become part of a police department's systemic practices). Or if there was a failure to sufficiently train detectives about the erroneous tendencies of this technology. Maybe the needlessly prolonged detention without bail could be an issue if there was a lack of adequate protocols to expedite in a reasonable amount of time.

Either way, still seems hard to say this a slam dunk case for her, unfortunately. But also seems too risky for the city of Fargo to not settle, at least nominally.

[1] Monell v. Department of Soc. Svcs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/436/658/