Sadly, you are being a reasonable person when reading and thinking about what words mean. You are, sadly, not a sitting members of the Supreme Court of the United States. This is how -- believe it or not -- qualified immunity works according to the Supremes.

(1) There has to have been a court ruling that declared X to be wrong or illegal for police to do something before Qualified Immunity was created out of nothingness in 1969.

(2) If no such ruling existed before 1969, then it's OK for police to do X. Not matter what.

(3) Believe it or not, the High Court has declared that (2) holds even in cases where the X-action was so fucking crazy that of course nobody had to bring a court case about it before 1969. So, while it was assumed before 1969 that these crazy things were not allowed, there is no court case that specifically declares it to be illegal for the police to do it.

(4) Now you are going to love this point, see point #3... well, because of how this all works, the lower courts (meaning all courts other the Supremes themselves) are FORBIDDEN for declaring that crazy action in #3 to be illegal or wrong for police to do. Even appeals courts can't do that. The Nine Supremes have only allowed this power to themselves, and in all the years since they created qualified immunity they have NEVER used this power. So, anything not forbidden to police before 1969 is allowed to be done by them until the day comes when the Supreme Court starts to fix the qualified immunity crazy.

Oh... and one last thing. Qualified Immunity is so fucking crazy, that the Supreme Court has declared that FAKE Police (literally people illegally impersonating police officers) are protected by qualified immunity. If you believe they were police, then they have Qualified Immunity. Even if later it turned out they were mob hit men sent to murder you by shoving you into a wood chipper. That's how fucking crazy Qualified Immunity has gotten.

QI does not make sense. Only the Supreme Court is made up of idiots. So that's why we find ourselves in this crazy fucking place.