Police Immunity Plan:

My value is morality because ought in the resolution is defined as a moral obligation

The state is inevitable- policymaking is the only way to create change.
Coverstone 5 Alan Coverstone (masters in communication from Wake Forest, longtime debate coach) “Acting on Activism: Realizing the Vision of Debate with Pro-social Impact” Paper presented at the National Communication Association Annual Conference November 17th 2005 An important concern emerges when Mitchell describes reflexive fiat as a contest strategy capable of “eschewing the power to directly control external actors” (1998b, p. 20). Describing debates about what our government should do as attempts to control outside actors is debilitating and disempowering. Control of the US government is exactly what an active, participatory citizenry is supposed to be all about. After all, if democracy means anything, it means that citizens not only have the right, they also bear the obligation to discuss and debate what the government should be doing. Absent that discussion and debate, much of the motivation for personal political activism is also lost. Those who have co-opted Mitchell’s argument for individual advocacy often quickly respond that nothing we do in a debate round can actually change government policy, and unfortunately, an entire generation of debaters has now swallowed this assertion as an article of faith. The best most will muster is, “Of course not, but you don’t either!” The assertion that nothing we do in debate has any impact on government policy is one that carries the potential to undermine Mitchell’s entire project. If there is nothing we can do in a debate round to change government policy, then we are left with precious little in the way of pro-social options for addressing problems we face. At best, we can pursue some Pilot-like hand washing that can purify us as individuals through quixotic activism but offer little to society as a whole. It is very important to note that Mitchell (1998b) tries carefully to limit and bound his notion of reflexive fiat by maintaining that because it “views fiat as a concrete course of action, it is bounded by the limits of pragmatism” (p. 20). Pursued properly, the debates that Mitchell would like to see are those in which the relative efficacy of concrete political strategies for pro-social change is debated. In a few noteworthy examples, this approach has been employed successfully, and I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed judging and coaching those debates. The students in my program have learned to stretch their understanding of their role in the political process because of the experience. Therefore, those who say I am opposed to Mitchell’s goals here should take care at such a blanket assertion. However, contest debate teaches students to combine personal experience with the language of political power. Powerful personal narratives unconnected to political power are regularly co-opted by those who do learn the language of power. One need look no further than the annual state of the Union Address where personal story after personal story is used to support the political agenda of those in power. The so-called role-playing that public policy contest debates encourage promotes active learning of the vocabulary and levers of power in America. Imagining the ability to use our own arguments to influence government action is one of the great virtues of academic debate. Gerald Graff (2003) analyzed the decline of argumentation in academic discourse and found a source of student antipathy to public argument in an interesting place. I’m up against…their aversion to the role of public spokesperson that formal writing presupposes. It’s as if such students can’t imagine any rewards for being a public actor or even imagining themselves in such a role. This lack of interest in the public sphere may in turn reflect a loss of confidence in the possibility that the arguments we make in public will have an effect on the world. Today’s students’ lack of faith in the power of persuasion reflects the waning of the ideal of civic participation that led educators for centuries to place rhetorical and argumentative training at the center of the school and college curriculum. (Graff, 2003, p. 57) The power to imagine public advocacy that actually makes a difference is one of the great virtues of the traditional notion of fiat that critics deride as mere simulation. Simulation of success in the public realm is far more empowering to students than completely abandoning all notions of personal power in the face of governmental hegemony by teaching students that “nothing they can do in a contest debate can ever make any difference in public policy.” Contest debating is well suited to rewarding public activism if it stops accepting as an article of faith that personal agency is somehow undermined by the so-called role playing in debate. Debate is role-playing whether we imagine government action or imagine individual action. Imagining myself starting a socialist revolution in America is no less of a fantasy than imagining myself making a difference on Capitol Hill. Furthermore, both fantasies influenced my personal and political development virtually ensuring a life of active, pro-social, political participation. Neither fantasy reduced the likelihood that I would spend my life trying to make the difference I imagined. One fantasy actually does make a greater difference: the one that speaks the language of political power. The other fantasy disables action by making one a laughingstock to those who wield the language of power. Fantasy motivates and role-playing trains through visualization. Until we can imagine it, we cannot really do it. Role-playing without question teaches students to be comfortable with the language of power, and that language paves the way for genuine and effective political activism. Debates over the relative efficacy of political strategies for pro-social change must confront governmental power at some point. There is a fallacy in arguing that movements represent a better political strategy than voting and person-to-person advocacy. Sure, a full-scale movement would be better than the limited voice I have as a participating citizen going from door to door in a campaign, but so would full-scale government action. Unfortunately, the gap between my individual decision to pursue movement politics and the emergence of a full-scale movement is at least as great as the gap between my vote and democratic change. They both represent utopian fiat. Invocation of Mitchell to support utopian movement fiat is simply not supported by his work, and too often, such invocation discourages the concrete actions he argues for in favor of the personal rejectionism that under girds the political cynicism that is a fundamental cause of voter and participatory abstention in America today.

Policy making necessitates tradeoffs—that means util.
Governments can only justify legitimate policies to the public through a utilitarian framework. Thus, prefer util since its the most educational for this round as it best simulates policymaking.
Woller 97 [Gary Woller (BYU Professor). “An Overview by Gary Woller.” A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics. June 1997. pp. 10.]
Moreover, virtually all public policies entail some redistribution of economic or political resources, such that one group's gains must come at another group's ex- pense. Consequently, public policies in a democracy must be justified to the public, and especially to those who pay the costs of those policies. Such justification cannot simply be assumed a priori by invoking some higher-order moral principle. Appeals to a priori moral principles, such as environmental preservation, also often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense, and since public policies inherently imply winners and losers, the policymakers' duty to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that the redistributive effects and value trade-offs implied by their polices are somehow to the overall advantage of society. At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. At best, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or actually making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so. Any number of policies might work, and others, although seemingly consistent with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation. (There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse outcomes of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The number of values typically involved in public policy decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above all, the scope and complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so conclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy. It is seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient.
Thus, the standard is maximizing expected well being.

Inherency:

Utah has terrible rates in which people are killed unjustly

Erin Alberty 2014 writes
Killings by Utah police outpacing gang, drug, child-abuse homicides
By ERIN ALBERTY | The Salt Lake TribuneFirst Published Nov 23 2014 10:36AM    •    Last Updated Jul 07 2015 09:27 pm

In the past five years, more Utahns have been killed by police than by gang members, drug dealers, or from child abuse. And so far this year, deadly force by police has claimed more lives — 13, including a Saturday shooting in South Jordan — than has violence between spouses and dating partners. As the tally of fatal police shootings rises, law enforcement watchdogs say it is time to treat deadly force as a potentially serious public safety problem. "The numbers reflect that there could be an issue, and it's going to take a deeper understanding of these shootings," said Chris Gebhardt, a former police lieutenant and sergeant who served in Washington, D.C., and in Utah, including six years on SWAT teams and several training duties. "It definitely can't be written off as citizen groups being upset with law enforcement." A Salt Lake Tribune review of nearly 300 homicides, using media reports, state crime statistics, medical-examiner records and court records, shows that use of force by police is the second-most common circumstance under which Utahns kill each other, surpassed only by intimate partner violence.

Plan text: The United States will limit qualified immunity for police officers in Utah.

I will offer the following definitions starting with the definition of qualified immunity from Cornell University Law school 

“Qualified immunity balances two important interests—the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably.” Pearson v. Callahan (07-751). Specifically, it protects government officials from lawsuits alleging that they violated plaintiffs’ rights, only allowing suits where officials violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right. When determining whether or not a right was “clearly established,” courts consider whether a hypothetical reasonable official would have known that the defendant’s conduct violated the plaintiff’s rights. Courts conducting this analysis apply the law that was in force at the time of the alleged violation, not the law in effect when the court considers the case.

Qualified immunity is not immunity from having to pay money damages, but rather immunity from having to go through the costs of a trial at all. Accordingly, courts must resolve qualified immunity issues as early in a case as possible, preferably before discovery.

Qualified immunity only applies to suits against government officials as individuals, not suits against the government for damages caused by the officials’ actions. Although qualified immunity frequently appears in cases involving police officers, it also applies to most other executive branch officials. While judges, prosecutors, legislators, and some other government officials do not receive qualified immunity, most are protected by other immunity doctrines.

Next the definition of state from the Miriam Webster Dictionary:

a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially :  one that is sovereign

Definition of united is:
 involving people or groups working together to achieve something

The definition of United States is:
a federation of states especially when forming a nation in a usually specified territory

Please note that the resolution calls into question whether we limit qualified immunity in the United States. By saying we should take it away in Utah I am solving for all of the negs arguments and solving the epidemic of young people being killed in this state  

Although these two words are generally used to describe the United States of America they don't mean that by themselves. It is the job of the debater to interpret the resolution and have justifications for the interpretation. 

 Now onto the case:

Sarah Elizabeth Spencer 83 Shareholder Attorney CHRISTENSEN & JENSEN, P.C. 257 East 200 South, Suite 1100 Salt Lake City, Utah 84111 801-323-5000

Individuals employed by or acting on behalf of local governments are subject to suit under Section 1983. Those individuals may be sued in either their “personal” or their “official” capacities. A suit against an individual in his “official capacity” constitutes a suit against the government entity on whose behalf the individual acted, and thus requires the additional elements of proof for claims against a government entity. On the other hand, a suit against the individual in his or her “personal” capacity asserts claims against the individual. In Hafer v. Melo, 502 U.S. 21, 25-26 (1991), the United States Supreme Court explained the differences between personal and official capacity suits:

Local governments, including counties and municipalities, are also subject to suit under Section 1983. Importantly, however, departments of local government entities, such as police departments, sheriff’s offices, etc., are not “persons” under Section 1983, unless they have separate legal existence, and thus generally are not subject to suit. Instead, the properly named defendant is the municipality or county of which the department is a part. See, e.g., Darby v. Pasadena Police Dept., 939 F.2d 311, 313-4 (5th Cir.1991) (stating that the police department was not subject to suit under Section 1983 because it did not ““enjoy a separate legal existence.”); Revene v. Charles County Comm’rs, 882 F.2d 870, 874 (4th Cir.1989) (finding that the Office of Sheriff is not a legal entity separate from the sheriff and the county government).

Advantage 1: Police forces in the state are overused and used to aggressively 

Patterson 2016 writes: 

Earlier this week, the Washington Post’s Radley Balko reported on recent stats from Utah concerning the use of SWAT teams to make arrests within that state. Utah had previously gained notoriety for it’s frequent and unnecessary use of SWAT teams. (It should be noted that 26% of the state’s police departments refused to provide data regarding the use of SWAT teams and no knock warrants. So the numbers listed below do not actually fully represent statewide totals. However, as noted in the article Utah is the only state in the country which – sorta – requires police departments to disclose such information.) In terms of frequency, Utah made a slight step in the right direction by reducing the amount of times SWAT teams were used when 2015 is compared to 2014. However, in relation to the purpose for the use of a SWAT team, there is very little to cheer about. Overwhelmingly, SWAT teams were used for victimless and more often than not non-violent drug crimes. Utah-SWAT-Team
Utah Police Used SWAT Teams/No Knock Warrants Significantly More Often For Drug Crimes Than for Known Violent Criminals
In addition, a substantial majority of those drug raids involved the use of no-knock warrants. Meanwhile, police used no knock warrants for less than 40% of the arrests involving people accused of violent crimes.Overall use of SWAT teams in Utah dropped 18 percent from 2014.Of the 457 SWAT deployments, 281 involved forcible entry into a private residence. About three out of four forcible entries were for drug-related offenses.
SWAT teams were originally intended as a response to active shooters, hostage takings, armed robberies, and other violent crimes-in-progress. So that nearly 75 percent of forced entries were for drug crimes is troubling. The raw data shows that just nine of the 457 SWAT deployments and forced entries were for incidents that could be described as a violent crime in progress. Another six were to arrest warrants for violent felons, and another 26 were to serve warrants against people suspected of committing a violent crime against another person. All told then, just 41 of the 457 SWAT incidents and forced entries in Utah in 2015 were for incidents in which a suspect presented an imminent threat to the safety of someone else — or just under 9 percent.
Interestingly, of the 26 incidents in which the SWAT team was sent after a suspect was suspected of a violent crime, police obtained a no-knock warrant 10 times, well less than half. By my calculations, about 60 percent of the warrants for drug crimes were no-knock warrants. Which means that Utah police were significantly more likely to give you a chance to come to the door and peacefully submit to a search or arrest if you were suspected of a violent crime than if you were suspected of a drug crime.
Suspects brandished weapons in just 3 percent of the 457 SWAT deployments, and actually fired a gun in just two incidents total, or less than half of 1 percent. Depending on your perspective, there are a couple of ways to look at this figure. It could mean that aggressive SWAT and door-breaking tactics are overwhelmingly being deployed against nonviolent people, or that the aggressive tactics are allowing police to apprehend violent suspects before they can reach for a weapon. I suspect it’s mostly the former. Just 6 percent of the warrants obtained for SWAT deployments and forced entries in the state last year involved a violent crime.

Not only are the police departments not giving out the required statistics, but they are using theses swat teams without warrants, and using them to raid looking for drugs. Swat teams are not meant for this 

Timmothy Rofua September 32 2016: The History and Purpose of SWAT Teams
Learn Where Special Weapons And Tactics Teams Came From and Why They Exist

Special Weapons and tactics teams continue to play a vital role in enforcing laws, particularly in situations that regular patrol officers aren't trained or equipped to handle. The goal of the SWAT team is to respond quickly to dangerous situations and bring them to a swift and hopefully nonviolent conclusion. Nonviolent crimes are reserved for police officers.

One impact of the Aff would be allowing police units to be taken to court when they no knock warrant for drugs, or kill someone for drugs as this is the second cause of death in the state.

Ultimately, the real job of the SWAT team is to mitigate and minimize casualties to whatever extent possible through special training and tactics. In so doing, their function provides a greater service to the public at large.

To clarify the policy I am presenting a policy would say we take away qualified immunity for any police officer who kills someone in a nonviolent drug crime.

Advantage 2: Utah has no reason to have such militarized police

Despite being the 13th largest state in the nation is is ranked number 45 on crime rating and is very safe

Spencer Ricks of the Dixie State University writes:

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is the No. 6 safest state in the U.S. and No. 1 safest state in the continental west, according to a recent study.WalletHub, an online ranking website, analyzed data from all 50 states in financial security, road safety, workplace safety, natural disaster safety and community stability to find “2015’s safest states to live in.”Greg Wilkins, Salt Lake City detective and public information officer, said Utah ranks high in public safety because “there is a real sense of community here.”
“Neighbors know neighbors and look out for each other in Utah more so than in other states,” Wilkins said. “People here are very involved in keeping the community safe.”Wilkins said crime rates are relatively low in Utah because there is not a strong gang presence, large pockets of “bad areas,” or a large percent of the population unemployed. According to the study, Utah has the fourth-lowest unemployment rate in the nation.“Utah has a good economy, and areas that are less economically privileged are pretty widely dispersed,” Wilkins said. “We also arrest a lot more bad guys than average.”Utah has one of the lowest driving fatality rates in the nation, according to the study. Sgt. Todd Royce of the Utah Highway Patrol said he and the UHP have been working to reduce the number of fatalities on Utah roads.

2015's Safest States to Live InAs much as we'd all like to point at a random spot on a map and decide to live there, relocating is unfortunately never that easy. And it shouldn't be.
“One fatality is too many,” Royce said. “Though we may have low fatality rates, when someone’s family member or best friend dies in a car accident, those statistics don’t matter.”Royce said Utah has one of the lowest rates of drunken-driving arrests in the U.S. The UHP has also been combatting distracted and drowsy driving with education and stronger enforcement of existing laws, Royce said.“One of the most important things motorists can do to say safe is to wear a seatbelt,” Royce said. “Only about 83 percent of the public wear seatbelts.”A new law passed by Utah legislatures last month will give motorists caught without a seatbelt a warning for the first violation and a citation for every violation after that.Natural disasters are also low in Utah. Utah has the third-lowest estimated property losses from climate disasters, according to the study.Utah also ranked fifth in the financial security category and sixth in workplace safety.“Overall, Utah is a really safe place to live,” Wilkins said.

Despite the fact that Utah is the 6th safest state in the country it has the second largest amount of people killed by the police each year. This does not add up and needs to be addressed.

 
Summary of the case:

Over the past few years 300 people per year killed by police outpacing everything except domestic abuse, very safe state as it is, most of deaths are drug users not people shooting/ committing violent crimes, over use of police. So by siding with the Aff you would be limiting these numbers of killings and allowing the families to receive justice for their losses.