Again, qualified immunity is one of those things that if you describe it to someone who has never heard of it in simple factual terms they will think you are entirely full of shit
It never made sense to me, hearing people use that phrase to minimize the prospect of systemic risk from unpunished malfeasance.
An apple putrefying in storage is likely to cause big problems if not dealt with promptly, as corruption (literal and figurative) does tend to spread in time.
Probably literally don’t understand what “matters of taste” could even mean, if they’re like most sales professionals, so they don’t see any information being lost when the first half is amputated
So, the fun thing is that the original (and actually *literally* true!) aphorism is
"a few bad apples spoil the barrel"
(rotting apples release a gas that promotes other apples to rapidly ripen, then rot.)
And it is also metaphorically true with cops!
A few bad apples makes the whole force bad apples because they are *clearly fucking covering for them*, meaning they're bad cops, too!
I used to be in law enforcement, and my understanding of qualified immunity was that it did not extend to off duty behavior. Helping your buddy rape someone wouldn't be covered. I don't know how they came to this conclusion.
I have tried to explain both QI and 'civil forfeiture' to a few W. Europeans and they did look at me like I'm not a reliable narrator. A German guy I described them to pressed me for mitigating details, like it just *couldn't* be like it is.
For the simple reason that rape still isn't taken seriously in this country. As in: how dare she go to a bar unaccompanied, where there are bound to be mischievous men who can hardly be expected to resist temptation.