No 'qualified immunity' for St Louis cops who spotted a traffic infraction, then fatally chased the perp's car into a tree, then rendered no aid as he died
The Eighth Circuit said Friday that two St. Louis County police officers weren’t entitled to qualified immunity after they allegedly bumped into a suspect’s car on purpose during a pursuit then failed to render aid when he crashed into a tree and died.
Sorry, Bloomberg Law has the world's finest paywall, and I've found no way around it, so we get only a tiny peek at the article, but that's enough.
The Eighth Circuit said Friday that two St. Louis County police officers weren’t entitled to qualified immunity after they allegedly bumped into a suspect’s car on purpose during a pursuit, then failed to render aid when he crashed into a tree and died.
Never been to St Louis, but everywhere I've lived the functional difference between city cops and county cops is that the county cops have wide-brim hats.
St. Louis is nearly unique of major cities in the fact that our city and county are separate counties and legal entities. Only the few miles of downtown and the immediate surrounding area are the city/county of St. Louis city, population 300k, the next 40 miles are st Louis county and consist of several cities such as Clayton, Brentwood, kirkwood, maplewood, ballwin, Manchester, Town & Country, Creve Coeur, etc, pop of all of these added is the 3+ million people that generally call themselves St Louis residents.
It’s not just our police that are split, everything is split. The “city” of st Louis as most understand it is actually over a hundred legally separate cities that are all close to the each other and a whole bunch of unincorporated areas that don’t participate in anything