Unreasonable search is always under attack though. There are many instances today of cops forcibly entering a home claiming nothing more than a welfare check, or "we received a call."
Edit to add that its also more difficult than it should be to protect and exercise the right against unreasonable search. If a cop knocks on your door its a consent-based interaction. You can simply not respond, but if you do happen to crack the door they can and will look in for any signs to claim as probable cause. Further there are cases where a person stepped out to talk and when they turned around and walked inside the cop slid right in behind them and later claimed in court the open door was implied consent. (I don't have a link to the court docs unfortunately.)
>There are many instances today of cops forcibly entering a home claiming nothing more than a welfare check, or "we received a call."
Sure, but there are also many instances today of evidence getting thrown out in court due to cops not getting a warranty and poisoning the tree and all its fruit. Rights don't just enforce themselves, there are and have to be a number of layers to the onion to help reduce the violation numbers at each stage.
There's also plenty of examples of even if the evidence is thrown out, there's damage to life or property that is never made whole.
I'm personally less concerned with those cases and more concerned with evidence that ultimately is thrown out allowed them to build a case that otherwise would have gone nowhere.
Say they search a vehicle without consent or probable cause and find weed. Then they further investigate the person and find additional evidence they otherwise never would have found. That weed find may get thrown out but it doesn't always nullify the rest of the case, and if the DA is clever they simply wouldn't submit the weed as evidence at all.
Maybe a better example as a half decent defense attorney, or the judge, could get subsequent evidence thrown out there.
A cop pulls you over for a brake light. They decide to go fishing, asking where you're coming from or where you're going, looking for any inconsistency to pull on. Maybe they decide they smell something on your breath.
A well informed person would refuse to ask questions and help ensure the traffic stop can move forward with the ticket, the cop isn't allowed to hold you for longer than required for the initial offense.
Most people when asked questions, though, will answer. Most people asked to take a field sobriety test will oblige. None of that is required and all requires consent - the cop knows that and knows that few people will stand up for that.
Such fishing expeditions should be illegal and anything found should be considered inadmissible due to unreasonable search. When the professional trained in law knows that they can game the average person it should be unreasonable practice.
That's not really relevant this was about going to jail after police break the constitution. If we're talking about bad things cops do there's civil asset forfeiture.
Rights needing to occasionally be upheld by the courts wasn't my complaint though. Its cases where rights we're clearly infringed, at least I'd expect most citizens would agree, and courts uphold it because a person didn't say a particular phrase, for example, or because a "reasonable" cop would have seen a cracked door as implied consent.
>There are many instances today of cops forcibly entering a home claiming nothing more than a welfare check, or "we received a call."
And there are also many instances of the city being sued, those cops being sued, losing qualified immunity, losing their jobs, etc, because we do still have recourse when cops do the wrong thing.
If your rights were violated, you stand to get a big payout, and get the cops fired that violated your rights. We aren't powerless, yet.
> And there are also many instances of [...] those cops being sued, losing qualified immunity, losing their jobs
Not really, the data points the other way. Cops basically never have to actually pay for their wrongdoings. Over 99.98% of money successfully recovered from cases against police is paid out by the cities, not cops personally [1]. A considerable number of cops that are fired are also eventually rehired by the same department [2] or a different one [3]. So I don't think it's that clear that you "have recourse when cops do the wrong thing".
[1] https://nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/NYULawRe...
[2] https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol74/iss4/4/
[3] https://yalelawjournal.org/pdf/GrunwaldRappaportArticle_s6br...
It isn't foolproof though, and police and DAs have incentive to both work together and to look the other way.
Note I also didn't say the problem is rampant. I take issue that its possible at all, and that it isn't a 100% success rate of holding police to account, especially when most are required to wear body cameras today.
Can you link to some of these cases of cops losing qualified immunity? It's an area in interested in but I understand that to be a vanishingly rare outcome - like only in very egregious cases, not just for run of the mill rights violations.
In case this isn't a bot and simply someone unfamiliar with the internet search, here is a snippet from the Google AI results when searching for the phrase, "list of US court cases where police lost qualified immunity."
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A federal court denies qualified immunity when an officer’s conduct violates a clearly established constitutional right or when material facts remain heavily disputed for a jury. While appellate and district courts routinely evaluate these claims, absolute lists contain thousands of entries because denials typically happen at the lower or circuit court levels rather than as sweeping national precedent.[0]
Notable Federal and Supreme Court Cases Denying Immunity
Taylor v. Riojas (2020): The U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed a lower court and denied qualified immunity to correctional officers who housed an inmate in shockingly filthy, human-waste-packed cells for days, ruling that the extreme conditions-violating the Eighth Amendment-needed no prior identical precedent.[1]
King v. Brownback (Sixth Circuit): The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied qualified immunity to members of a joint law enforcement task force after they aggressively tackled and beat an innocent man (James King) outside a convenience store when they mistook him for a suspect.[2]
Schroeder v. City of Des Moines (2022): The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that three police officers were not entitled to qualified immunity after conducting an unlawful, suspicionless car stop and subsequent arrest based on an unverified temporary license plate.[3]
Glover v. City of Jackson (2024): A federal district court famously rejected a detective’s qualified immunity defense in a major civil rights action involving fabricated evidence and malicious prosecution, highlighting systemic flaws in the doctrine itself.[4]
[0] - https://ij.org/press-release/massive-new-study-reveals-that-...
[1] - https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/qualified-imm...
[2] - https://ij.org/case/king-v-brownback/
[3] - https://iowaappeals.com/uncategorized/three-des-moines-polic...
[4] - https://eji.org/news/federal-court-denies-qualified-immunity...
Or your family gets the payout because the cops killed you.