Ep. 20 - Holding Police Accountable with Dave O’Brien

Power without limits erodes trust. So we asked civil rights attorney Dave O’Brien to unpack where legal shields end and accountability begins, starting with qualified immunity and the controversial “clearly established” requirement that can block claims when facts are new but harm is real. Dave walks us through the constitutional reasonableness standard, why “imminent threat” must be immediate rather than hypothetical, and how the law insists every single bullet be justified on its own. Along the way, we confront “contagious shooting,” the tendency of officers to fire because others do, and why courts reject that shortcut in favor of independent judgment.

From training rooms to streets, we examine how preparation aims to overcome stress responses. Dave highlights practical tools like distance plus cover equals time, and then asks the hard question: is baseline training enough when officers hold the power of life and death? We compare large city departments with small-town agencies, discuss recruitment, ongoing scenario work, and the cultural traits that predict calm decision-making under pressure. The conversation also opens the black box of supervision and policy. Under Monell, there’s no automatic liability up the chain; you need proof of a policy, pattern, or failure to train that caused the violation. That’s where discovery into memos, directives, and protest responses can define whether leadership owns the outcome.

Consequences shape behavior. Dave shares real verdicts, including a multimillion-dollar wrongful death award after a reckless high-speed chase, and explains how municipal insurance, not individual assets, typically pays. These outcomes educate officers about constitutional limits and assure communities that the law still bites when boundaries are crossed. For reform, Dave’s north star is simple: remove the “clearly established” hurdle and judge conduct by objective reasonableness, preserving protection for justified actions while opening a path to remedy when power overreaches. If you care about fair policing, functional communities, and a justice system that works for both officers and citizens, this is a blueprint worth hearing and debating.

If the conversation resonates, follow the show, share this episode with a friend, and leave a review with the reform you’d prioritize first.

Transcript

Setting The Stage

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back, everyone, to the Radical Moderate Podcast. I am your host, Pat O'Brien. And for those of you who listened last week to part one of this uh interview with civil rights attorney Dave O'Brien, we went into uh in deep depth the situation in Minneapolis with the uh the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and just use of force. And for those of you who didn't hear that episode, Dave O'Brien is based out of Iowa, which is also in the Eighth Circuit, same circuit that Minnesota is in. And all he does is use of force cases and things surrounding that. And so, Dave, this week, I want to talk about some topics we didn't get into on the last episode. I want to start with qualified immunity. You you mentioned that several times for the non-lawyers and the people who, even lawyers who've just never done uh case like this, what does that mean? What is the policy and legal uh meaning of the of the term qualified immunity?

The “Clearly Established” Problem

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Well, of course, immunity uh comes from sovereign immunity, which is the king can do no wrong. Uh, and and uh uh one of the reasons why we had a revolution here here in the uh in the colonies uh 250 years ago uh was because we didn't want to be uh ruled by somebody that can be uh that can do no wrong. But that that's where it comes comes from, sovereign immunity, and then the king's agents um and uh in that context can have some qualified immunities as they developed. And in these in this context, it make it does make some sense for the reasons we talked about a little bit uh in the last episode, and that is that you know we're asking law enforcement officers to engage in conduct uh that uh, if we did it, might be a criminal uh sanction on its own, like assaulting someone, grabbing them, pulling them, restraining them. Uh, and if they need to do that in order to protect themselves or others, that's what we want them to do. That's what we hire them. And so it would really not be a very workable system if they could be sued every time they touch somebody. And that that is because they have, under federal law, qualified immunity to engage in that conduct as long as they do so in an objectively reasonable manner. And then under Iowa law, I can always file a claim that an officer assaulted somebody, but I have to establish that they did so without justification. Um, and as long as they're justified in doing what they did, then they they're exonerated. Um, so so it's an important factor. There's a lot of criticism about qualified immunity because it's kind of been turned into something that makes it almost impossible to win in some cases, particularly new sets of facts. The uh uh U.S. Supreme Court added the term clearly established constitutional violation. It's not in the statute. Uh in the Harlow case, the Supreme Court added that. Um, and and uh that's uh been a lot of courts have run with that and uh said you basically have to come in to them with a case that says it was clearly established that this constitutional line was violated. And if you don't have that, oftentimes you will lose unqualified immunity. So it's highly technical. Um there's in my view, there's a solid justification for having that factor set out, but I think it's evolved into something that's almost unworkable and it needs significant, uh, significant modification in order to, in order for us to hold police accountable when they do act objectively unreasonably.

Policy Fixes And Fair Standards

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Well, and let's talk about kind of the policy, and even if it's uh legislative, be a state legislature or the U.S. Congress. You're around this stuff all the time. You handle these cases. You're not, you you yourself don't have a police officer background or anything, but you you state in the last episode that 90% of the time law enforcement's doing a very tough job exactly the way we would want them to do it. And of course, we all we all want to know that if we call 911, you know, we want some help. You know, we we we want that help and we we want the officer uh to have some discretion and that sort of thing. If you were advising, I don't know that the Minneapolis situation, or even if you go back uh to I think 2014, Michael Brown, I don't know that you're gonna see any legislative reform necessarily. But let's say for a second we did, and you were advising uh whoever and say, look, we really want to get this thing right. The law needs to be good for both sides. What would you advise a legislative body to do to make the law more clear and fair on the citizen side and the law enforcement side?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Well, I would I would remove the clearly established provision and just go back to the constitutional violation. If it, if, if you have the standard as an objectively reasonable officer that would not or that either would have acted that way or would not have acted that way. And the result depends, the liability depends on the result, the answer to that question. I think you're good. The problem, anytime you just try to get into specifics is that these fact patterns just are all over the place. And you just never know how it's going to come about. And so it's like driving a car, right? I mean, you you have to drive your car in a in an appropriate manner. And if you drive your car in a in a negligent manner, you can be held accountable. And that negligence can arrive in many different ways, speed, recklessness, doing something you're not supposed to do, or failing to do something you're supposed to do. And and it just every fact, every case is different. And so I think you need to let the you need to let the courts sort it out with a reasonable, appropriate standard. I think qualified immunity should be allowed for these officers. So if they engage in conduct, um, they they can be immune uh for conduct that was justified, uh, but also held accountable for conduct that wasn't. And I don't think the fact that it's clearly established or not makes a darn bit of difference. If your constitutional rights have been violated, uh you ought to have uh uh a forum uh for getting compensation for those losses. I mean, that's what we're about, a constitutional democracy. Um, and we have the Bill of Rights for a reason, and we ought to be able to enforce it.

Imminent Threat And Reasonableness

SPEAKER_00 6:24

I I don't know if we got uh into the topic of imminent threat. Is that a is that a legal principle? Is that applicable everywhere? Or am I making stuff up here?

SPEAKER_01 6:35

No, imminent is part of the part of the analysis on the objectively reasonable use of force. It has to be an imminent threat. So uh you have to be able to conclude that this person is imminently uh gonna uh uh put someone else in danger. Um, so it's pretty easy if they're turning towards you with a gun. But what if you know that they're driving to uh their home to get a gun to go to their former mate's uh house and inflict them with harm? Well, can you just shoot them on that point? No, because the threat at that point is not imminent. So it does play a role, um, but uh it's usually uh it's it's you I haven't had a case anything like that where somebody said, Well, I got to shoot him because an hour from now he was gonna go do something wrong. I haven't had that one. It needs to be concerned. Yeah, I'd be concerned that it wouldn't be clearly established, but yeah, it's like it needs to all be that case at the same time, you know.

Contagious Shooting Defined

SPEAKER_00 7:33

It's it there that makes perfect sense. There's two things I want to make sure we talk about. We can do it either order you want. Contagious shooting, I hadn't heard that term before, but we all know the idea that the first bullet, you got to just you're you're saying you got to justify every bullet that you're shooting. And then the second thing, you talked about supervisory role here, meaning you've got the officer, the cop on the beat, but then you you're dealing mostly, I think, in your practice with a lot of police, you know, maybe municipal police, maybe you're dealing with a a state entity, uh, maybe ICE. I don't know if you said you had any ICE cases, but either one you want to talk about what is what is contagious shooting, and then what is the potential civil liability for the higher-ups? And what do they have to do? I mean, they weren't there, they didn't pull the trigger.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Right. Um, so just with the contagious shooting, it it I think this case is a perfect example of it. Um one of the uh good things about about what I do is I get a chance to engage with a lot of police practices experts. Most, most of the time, they're uh highly qualified former law enforcement officers at some level. In some instances, they're uh academic people that have PhDs and done research in all in this area, written books, many books on these subjects. And the contagious shooting is something that the that the um that the experts have identified that officers have a tendency that if one of the other ones shoot, they just fire away based on the other, thinking the other officer must have seen something I didn't see. And um, and so it it does become a problem because that is not considered uh a justifiable use of force. Well, he fired, so I fired. Um, you know, just like mom used to say, well, if they all jump off a bridge, are you gonna jump off a bridge? And the answer is no. I mean, theoretically, we jumped on off some bridges, I'd imagine, in our business, but uh you know what you know what I'm talking about. So contagious shooting doesn't isn't justified, and there is there is an that's an academic term for it. Uh there have some other terms that they call it, but yeah, you can't just shoot because the other guy shot. Uh now you can rely on information from the other person. Like I was told he has a gun, uh, and then I came around the corner from where the officer who just radioed that this guy has a gun and he has a red shirt on, and he and he turned and he had his back towards me. And then as he turned around, his arm was whipping around. And it turns out it was a cell phone. But you know, in that case, you're probably gonna be justified in firing because you could rely on information provided, but you can't just rely on that officer's decision to use deadly force. You have to make your own independent judgment, and that judgment has to be objectively reasonable.

Justifying Every Shot

SPEAKER_00 10:08

On this question of the multiple shots, contagious shooting, I'm gonna kind of take the other side of the argument a little bit and say, I've heard a lot of lectures about from experts about how the brain works. And, you know, we we have a fight or flight uh mentality. And basically when you when you feel imminently threatened and of serious bodily harm, going back to the the caveman days, if you're worried that lions are gonna jump out of the woods, I think you're what what I think a lot of the brain expert people would say is your brain shuts down and you're just trying to defend yourself. There's no thought of Supreme Court case or even probably what I got trained. And and just for me, I think that once that first shot happens, it's gonna be really hard to think that somebody's given a lot of thought to the second, third, fourth shot. But how does the law view that, though? Are you saying that no, they're held responsible for the second shot? So let's say the first shot hits them in the leg and then they wait a second, but then the second shot hits them in the heart. What's the legal distinction between those two shots? How does it work under the law? There has to be justification for each shot.

Training, Stress, And Accountability

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Um, and um, the scenario that you gave, as long as the person is still holding the gun and moving in in an aggressive manner, the second shot is entirely reasonable. If the set first shot hits him in the leg and the guy drops the gun and then you shoot him in the heart, uh, you know, you you could have some issues. Now, depending on how close it is in time, did you did you pull the trigger? There's a there's a perception reaction time analysis that comes in in terms of deciding to pull the trigger and pull the trigger, which takes uh a bit of time, a second, maybe. Um, so it it it it all goes into play, but you have to be justified. And if if uh and I've had that case where they drop the gun and they get shot anyway, and and the and the uh we were civilly able to recover in that case um because the justification previously was present. They told him to drop the gun, he dropped the gun, and then later they shot him. Um, and and you know, they they can't do that because he's not, he doesn't pose that imminent threat of serious physical injury or harm at the time. Um, so yeah, listen, this isn't easy, but I do want to address one of the points you're making. You you are 100% right that there is uh uh sort of a reptilian nature that that comes into play for people. That's why we have officers that have to go through training 22 weeks at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy. And we spend millions of dollars a year in the sit in the state of Iowa training law enforcement officers to be able to act reasonably and appropriately under these, under these very, very difficult circumstances. And uh that's that's why we do that. And they have to follow their training. And it would be the same way to say, well, ah, the doctor cut the wrong whatever part of his body. So you know, come on, he's in there, it's all bloody. I mean, let's just give him a break, you know.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Well, I want to go to that first one.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Well, he's been trained to handle these situations, and officers are too, and they they can should can and in my view should be held accountable if they don't uh if they don't use their training and follow their training when faced uh in circumstances. Although I will tell you, it it does happen. I've got what I call Barney Fife's cases, uh, which uh, you know, are cases where it's a well-meaning officer, uh, but they get in a situation that's over their head and they react inappropriately. And I still believe they should be held accountable, maybe not punitive damages, but I still think they should be held accountable. Um, there those are cases are not as bad as the Captain America cases, you know, where the officer comes in and, you know, gum-ho officer, I'm just gonna fire away. Uh, but but there's still uh it's still a violation of people's constitutional rights. Somebody's still dead because this officer screwed up and they may have been party five trying to get the bullet out of their pocket. Uh uh, but that doesn't justify the use of deadly force of the fact that the officer might be bumbling. I'm not gonna buy that one.

Is Police Training Enough

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Yeah, I want to go back to something because you made the analogy with a doctor. Let's say a surgeon in this case. You know, a surgeon has to go to school for so many years and be a resident, all that, before they're allowed to open up your heart and start moving stuff around. And of course, everybody says, well, I want the best surgeon, et cetera, et cetera. Now you could easily say, yeah, but Pat, you're consenting to that. I mean, you don't have to let anybody do surgery on you. That's that's your choice. But still, I think the the training, the point here is that their training is top level in the world, right? They're getting the best training before we would say they're qualified. And we absolutely are going to second guess them. If you die on the table, the the surgeon could be sued. There, they got to pay malpractice insurance. Like, did you do your job? And I'm wondering, I mean, how much training do we have enough training? And let we talked about ICE in Minnesota last episode. Let's just broaden it out to your standard. You, you and I were both uh born in Sioux City, Iowa, a town of 100,000. That's probably got a pretty decent police force, but then we we know places like Spencer, Iowa, you know, that have 10,000 people. You got different levels of probably professionalism and law enforcement. Do we is the training good enough that you across Iowa and maybe the whole country, that you can hand somebody a badge and a gun and say, look, we trust you to do the right thing and not kill people that you shouldn't have killed? Because just like a surgeon, they literally have the power of life and death. Is the training sufficient from your experience?

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Well, the answer to your question is no. Uh uh, it's not. It's not sufficient. I don't know how it compares worldwide, but I can tell you that in Iowa, uh, you can be a law enforcement officer in Iowa if you have a high school uh degree, and then you go to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy for 22 weeks, and then you are given a gun and you are are uh told that you can use deadly force uh if if justified, if you're facing an imminent threat of serious injury or death, you are another. And that's why to me it's really amazing that we have so few of these in my home state. I'm not, I can't speak, and DHS is a whole different story, you know, whether they've gotten the proper training, what orders they're getting. And we we we want to touch on that because you mentioned the Monell liability for supervisors. Uh but in the context of the training, you know, they do spend a lot of time working on on when you how to identify an imminent threat of serious injury or death and how to appropriately respond. Uh, they have they have concepts that they that they definitely train on, uh that like distance plus cover equals time. And that's in a situation where there's a standoff. Anytime an officer can can create some distance from a threat and be behind cover, that gives them the one thing they're looking for uh in order to try to diffuse a situation, and that's time. Uh and the longer the situation goes on, the more likely it's going to be resolved in a reasonable manner. So they they have some training. Um, it's not enough. And then they have, but they have ongoing training every year, too. Uh a lot of it, weeks of training every year where they're going through these and and should go through these. I think they should have more. I think the academic standard should be a little bit higher. But then again, there's a need out there for law enforcement officers. Uh and you have to, you know, public people in public policy positions making these decisions have to have to understand that. And so I don't, I don't know what the uh what the ratio is uh for officers to population and and whether we have enough that are applying um and if we're getting the wrong type or the right type of people applying. Um I usually, when I get into these cases, I find out a lot about this person. And uh, you know, sometimes it becomes pretty obvious the type of person that is a law enforcement officer and they're being overly aggressive because the the best night of their life was having, you know, three tackles from loss in the high school game against a crosstown library. And uh, you know, um, yeah, that that may not be the person you want with a gun in their hand deciding whether you pose a serious injury or threat. Um, on the other hand, you get uh some of these guys that have the training and have been around. I've I've talked to a lot of police officers that have never fired their gun in in uh in the line of duty in an incident. They, of course, do all their training. And, you know, those are the kind of guys you want, you want around and present when when stuff's about to go down because you know calmer heads are going to prevail. If there's a way to avoid using debitly force, you're supposed to do that. Uh, it can't be the first option.

Supervisors And Monell Liability

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, and I think, you know, it's kind of an unfair analogy that I put there between a surgeon who might be paid$500,000 a year and and uh an officer who might be getting paid$50,000 a year, or, you know, even in a bigger municipality,$75, I and part of thing I want to make a comment on is I put a lot of stuff back on the citizens. And if you were to go to any town in America and say, look, your police force is underpaid and undertrained, and you need to pay for it. We need to raise your taxes because it's not good enough. I think their first question is being like, have we had big problems? You know, nobody's died. And and it's not until something happens and somebody says, well, we have a problem. So I I bet that most law enforcement would be love to have more training and love to be paid more and that sort of thing. I want to get into uh something we danced around earlier, which is the supervisory role here. And whether you want to talk about go back to Minneapolis and how the policy and and the supervision there, uh, if you want to talk about that, or if you've got some cases that you want to talk about. So let's just say you got an officer or an ICE agent, whoever, on the beat. How does a person, how does their boss get involved? Like what could make usually creates legal liability problems for that person?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Well, there is no uh respondent superior liability in in this context in 1983 cases. So we everything we've been talking about is that officer that that uses deadly force uh has to justify their conduct, but their supervisors aren't responsible for that conduct in most situations. The exception to that is if the supervisors uh on up the chain of command have put in pay in place a uh policy, uh practice standard uh uh of engaging in such um uh abuses, of violating people's civil rights. And you that's a Monel, it's called the Monell case. It's another U.S. Supreme Court case where they said there's not there's not just supervisory responsibility. You know, in a in a standard negligent case for uh driving a car or uh slipping on a uh uh sidewalk, um a supervisor can be held liable because they're they're ultimately responsible for the works of their agents that work for them. But that's not true in these cases. Supervisors are only responsible if they put in place a policy pattern or practice that allows this kind of conduct. And those are very difficult to prove. Uh, but I sh I I, you know, we re I'll read the news. We see what these orders coming down in in Minneapolis and DHS. Now, they'll have to get to the bottom of all that, uh, but I can pretty much guarantee you that those claims will be made. Uh, and if they develop discoveries showing that supervisors aren't at the chain of command, uh were implementing these policies that led that led to the violation of uh Ms. Good and Mr. Predi's uh civil rights, they potentially could be held liable under this Monell case and and uh and and that and that liability. And and you certainly have to get to the bottom of that, but it's possible.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Yeah, it sounds there's gonna be a lot more investigation. And certainly if you were the civil rights attorney suing, you're gonna ask to see is there a memo that's damning and and you know text messages and all that. I I want to ask you to the extent you can share um because we're kind of talking about there's the officer and I know an officer can certainly be civilly liable, but most officers are not going to have assets that they're gonna be able to pay a victim's family. So you're probably getting it from the municipality, the county, et cetera what type of you know verdicts and the amount of a verdict is a signal to a community and to everyone of like this if if if you get a$5,000 verdict to me that says nobody cared that much. Nobody thought that was that big a deal. If you get a million dollar verdict that is saying this was bad. This needs to stop immediately somebody needs to do there needs to be reform. What in Iowa, which for those who've never visited the fine state of Iowa as much as I have, it's about 3 million people. It's an agricultural based uh Midwestern state a lot of corn and and that sort of thing a lot of good solid Midwestern people what did juries when you've taken cases in Iowa to trial what have juries said about this liability? What kind of damages have have they done? And I don't know if you can talk about settlements.

Damages, Insurance, And Deterrence

SPEAKER_01 23:43

They might be confidential but what what kind of messages have verdict juries said about officers who just went too far the answer is none of this is confidential in terms of settlements because you can't have a you can't have a confidential settlement with the government agency. Good boy. One of the advantages of of what I do um is we everything is public and it does it does have an impact, I think, uh because people read about these cases and they know what's right or wrong and I think it it it let it helps police officers know what they can do and what they can't do. But juries here's the thing these cases all follow the same the same pattern in terms of of how they come about um I've I've taken a few of them to trial uh and uh the verdicts have been quite substantial um but people have a really high level of saying all right we're we like you know law enforcement officers when we call them they come and do a good job and I want to be able to rely on them. So Brian you're really going to have to convince me that this guy screwed up and but once we convince them that this guy screwed up they're like okay that's it where do we where do we sign the check? Where where how do we what what's a big enough number here where we can get people's attention that we don't want this happening again. And we want to give these people full compensation for the losses that they've suffered. So for example uh I I had a case where a the guy I think I mentioned it in our previous episode the uh local officer decides to take over a chase that everybody stopped doing including state troopers because it's not worth the risk high speed chases somebody else could get hurt very easily and this guy's not in my town and he chases this motorcyclist out the other end doesn't intentionally in my view doesn't turn his camera on it intentionally runs right into the guy and kills him and uh the jury uh looked at that and said four and a half million bucks and they appealed it they uh to his mother and his father for lost consortium uh and um and uh people took it the city took it all the way city of Manchester Iowa small town uh took it all the way in the Iowa Supreme Court and we just got a decision a few months ago and uh they had to pay that they had to pay that and there's insurance coverage these officers it's not coming out of their pocket the cities just like they have motor vehicle collision coverage for their cars uh they have police practices coverage for their law enforcement officers that typically that doesn't include punitive damages although I have seen some policies now where punitive damages have even been been covered by insurance policies which in my view is bad public policy but that's up to the city council uh and the punitive damages against an individual officer are based upon the officer's wealth so it's not like oh we get we get a million dollars because a city of Des Moines has a$250 million budget. It just doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Yeah but just so the audience is clear uh you know a bad night at work bad day at work for this one officer resulted in a four and a half million dollar liability for that you said relatively small city.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Yes and they had they had cover they had insurance coverage to cover that uh so their insurance policy had to pay had to pay that amount um uh for the for the wrongful conduct of of their officer who engaged in intentional reckless behavior running motorcycles off the road knowing full well it's 65 miles an hour out on the highway um it was going to result in serious injury or death and he admitted that but he did it anyway and then he claimed the guy he was chasing actually ran into him somehow which he never properly explained because it's impossible. So by the time the jury heard two weeks worth of evidence on that case they were they were ready to write a big check and they did.

Protests, Free Speech, And Immunities

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Goodness well we've got a couple minutes left here and you know we've we've touched on so many topics but I think we could go on for hours and hours. I mean we haven't even gone back to like the Michael Brown case in 2014. We haven't talked about uh the Floyd case which sparked so much uh turmoil and I don't I worry that it didn't necessarily solve much we we didn't really get into body cams uh but but there's a lot we could talk about maybe I'll have you on maybe maybe when we get some uh resolution on the cases in Minneapolis maybe that'd be a good time to come back and kind of break down what we what you think happened. But in the remaining time, what would you like to leave our audience with let's say they're not attorneys and they're not police officers, just people who just want a good common sense policy. They want to know that the system makes sense. What would you leave the audience with?

Final Takeaways And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Well you know the the whole Minnesota and DHS thing and having uh out of state law enforcement officers come in in in the thousands and and occupy your city is just outside the realm of anything we have to comprehend and thank God it's not happening in in my home state and I applaud the people in Minnesota for for standing up and asserting their rights. I do think it's important. You know my my clients are never perfect. Well I shouldn't say never uh I I did have two two female uh uh teachers that went out and protested at a George W. Bush re-election rally uh saying bad war no more and they got arrested because the Secret Service told people the local uh agents to arrest them they took them down to the Lynn County jail and strip searched them and um and that was a seven eight years later uh two trials uh two appeals to the Eighth Circuit uh they ultimately had to had to pay that I I brought that I bring that case up because we we talked we touched a little bit on Monel liability in that case is where we got into that I I actually sued Tom Ridge in that case who was the head of uh of Homeland Security at the time because he oversaw the Secret Service at that point in time he got dismissed out of the case. The reason I sued him is because we we got a hold of a memo which was widely uh let out at that point in time that the president didn't like protesters and he didn't want to see them and they made him move them out of the way. And if there were protesters and these people were standing on a public sidewalk which is the quintessential free speech platform and they were told they had to move and they didn't move fast enough and they got arrested anyway. And uh but I still didn't get Monell liability even though I had a memo directing these Secret Service agents to tell the local officers to arrest people if they got in a place where the president could see them because he didn't want to see protesters. And uh but we didn't we didn't overcome the ability to do that. And I I it might have appealed that decision but ultimately it got a nice verdict against the people that strip searched her and the clients were satisfied and we walked away from it. But I I think we're gonna run into a lot of issues with that in Minnesota. And I think you're gonna run into immunity issues now. We might be moving from qualified immunity to just executive immunity that's sovereign immunity we talked about the Supreme Court has basically written a blank check to the president in terms of what he can get away with. How does that apply to uh other people down the line the attorney general the the director of homeland security um yeah who knows it it and and the good news is you'll have a lot of really smart lawyers on both sides looking into this gathering all the facts and I I believe our justice system will arrive at the right outcome and I'll be happy to come back and talk to you about it when that happens.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Let's put a pin in that I I I I think that the the the way that this plays out is going to be fascinating. I want to I want to thank you for coming on today and uh hopefully as always my uh audience has learned something and I want to thank everyone for listening to the POV of POBISTING I think I'm gonna be able to do it.