Peter Bibring on Excessive Force Law, Peggy Case on Right to Water

This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court has just ruled that a woman shot four times by a police officer, though she posed no threat to him or anyone else, has no grounds to sue the officer, because he has a kind of immunity that means if he didn’t understand that he was violating her Constitutional rights, he wasn’t. We’ll talk about trying to use law to protect communities from excessive force from law enforcement, with Peter Bibring, director of police practices at the ACLU of Southern California.

Also on the show: A judge has approved an agreement to screen the children in Flint, Michigan, for learning disabilities. US District Judge Arthur Tarnow declared that a “win-win situation for all sides.” Meanwhile, Flint residents will no longer receive free bottled water from the state, whether their tap water is safe or not. But wait, there’s more: Michigan also decided to let Nestle extract more spring water from the state, to sell for profit. Flint residents who now need to buy the bottled water they’re forced to use—for washing, cooking, bathing—don’t have to buy it from Nestle. But that would bring the whole game full circle, wouldn’t it? Peggy Case is president of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation. We’ll talk to her about Michigan’s—but not only Michigan’s—struggle over the right to water.


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