What is qualified immunity for a police officer in a civil case?
The following excerpt is from Sloman v. Tadlock, 21 F.3d 1462 (9th Cir. 1994):
Government officials such as police officers are not absolutely immune from suit, but rather only "insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). Qualified immunity protects "all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law." Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct.
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necessitates three inquiries: (1) the identification of the specific right allegedly violated; (2) the determination of whether that right was so "clearly established" as to alert a reasonable officer to its constitutional parameters; and (3) the ultimate determination of whether a reasonable officer could have believed lawful the particular conduct at issue.
Romero v. Kitsap County, 931 F.2d 624, 627 (9th Cir.1991) (citations omitted).
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