Matthew Cavedon
Matthew Cavedon

In a December 18 amicus brief to the Supreme Court regarding Cunningham v. Baltimore County, the Cato Institute argued that a lower court was wrong to apply qualified immunity protection to a police officer because it could find no prior decision involving nearly identical facts. In this case, the police officer fired his rifle through the wall of a kitchen where he knew a five-year-old child was present but not visible, striking the child twice, because—in the officer’s own words—he was “hot and frustrated.”
On August 1, 2016, two Baltimore County police officers arrived at the apartment of Korryn Gaines to serve misdemeanor arrest warrants for her failure to appear in court for alleged traffic violations and an assault charge. The officers knocked on the door and announced their presence. No one opened the door. Hearing people moving inside, the officers kicked down the door and entered the apartment to find Gaines sitting on the floor with a shotgun in her lap. The officers immediately exited the residence and called for backup, leaving Gaines inside with her five-year-old son, Kodi. Around this time, the officers learned that Gaines was struggling with mental illness and was not taking her prescribed medication.
More than 30 armed officers and counter-snipers surrounded the apartment, taking up positions in and around the building. They held their positions for six hours in the sweltering heat, which was made more oppressive by the police’s decision to cut power to Gaines’s apartment.
Around the six-hour-and-forty-five-minute mark, Gaines walked into the kitchen to make her son a sandwich. She brought Kodi with her, along with her gun, which she did not point at anyone. It was at this point that Corporal Ruby, who could only see Gaines’s braided hair and the barrel of her weapon, took a headshot through the drywall of the kitchen.  » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/cunningham-v-baltimore-county-brief-holding-police-accountable-conscience-shocking-shooting