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Perhaps police should be licensed like professionals (doctors / lawyers) and be required to have malpractice insurance. Premiums could be based on their prior c

by biofox 10y ago

Perhaps police should be licensed like professionals (doctors / lawyers) and be required to have malpractice insurance. Premiums could be based on their prior conduct. Gross misconduct would result in them losing their right to work in law enforcement. I imagine that would solve the problem.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Perhaps police should be licensed like professionals (doctors / lawyers) and be required to have malpractice insurance. Or just not covered by a near-blanket immunity from liability. If they were exposed to personal liability, you wouldn't need to expressly require liability insurance, they'd see the need quickly. And insurers would probably take care of the equivalence of licensing requirements by the factors that controlled insurance pricing.
- wahern 10y ago
  Police officers are exposed to personal liability more often than you'd think. But police unions almost universally require that the municipality indemnify or otherwise insure their officers for any personal liability. It's similar to D&O (director and officer) insurance that every corporation carries. Directors are exposed to substantial personal liability from stockholder suits, but all that cost is just passed through to the corporations. For many, many reasons I don't think professional liability insurance is a good comparison. Suffice is to say that being a cop is not a traditional professional occupation. The incentives just don't line up the same way. It's like arguing we could make the internet safer by making programmers personally liable for their bugs. There's some superficial logic to it, but only when you ignore the reality of the labor market and how it's structured.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    You've made a somewhat strange comparison: > [advocating that police officers be personally liable for their conduct is like] arguing we could make the internet safer by making programmers personally liable for their bugs. What I like about this comparison: It treats police brutality as a systemic civic problem, like bugs in software that lead to global insecurity on the internet. Police brutality, like internet fragility, is a problem that threatens (at least nearly) everyone. Also similar is that people are reluctant to recognize the peripheral damage - police brutality decreases the quality of government and capacity for civic engagement for everyone, not just the victims. Things I don't like about this comparison: The idea of personal liability for programmers because bugs because internet insecurity is an incredible abstraction. Compared to, for example, police officers who literally break down people's doors and shoot them, it's pretty hard to see the similarity in terms of the connection. Also: a company that decides to deploy a product that contains bugs has an opportunity to audit the software in order to prevent that. There's really no similarity in that respect. These cops know better - nobody thinks that breaking down someone's door in the middle of the night and terrorizing their family is proper behavior for an adult in a free society. But they do it anyway. This is malicious, horrific conduct and it's a stretch to say that liability is improper for the perpetrators.

by biofox 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Perhaps police should be licensed like professionals (doctors / lawyers) and be required to have malpractice insurance. Or just not covered by a near-blanket immunity from liability. If they were exposed to personal liability, you wouldn't need to expressly require liability insurance, they'd see the need quickly. And insurers would probably take care of the equivalence of licensing requirements by the factors that controlled insurance pricing.

wahern 10y ago
Police officers are exposed to personal liability more often than you'd think. But police unions almost universally require that the municipality indemnify or otherwise insure their officers for any personal liability. It's similar to D&O (director and officer) insurance that every corporation carries. Directors are exposed to substantial personal liability from stockholder suits, but all that cost is just passed through to the corporations. For many, many reasons I don't think professional liability insurance is a good comparison. Suffice is to say that being a cop is not a traditional professional occupation. The incentives just don't line up the same way. It's like arguing we could make the internet safer by making programmers personally liable for their bugs. There's some superficial logic to it, but only when you ignore the reality of the labor market and how it's structured.
- jMyles 10y ago
  You've made a somewhat strange comparison: > [advocating that police officers be personally liable for their conduct is like] arguing we could make the internet safer by making programmers personally liable for their bugs. What I like about this comparison: It treats police brutality as a systemic civic problem, like bugs in software that lead to global insecurity on the internet. Police brutality, like internet fragility, is a problem that threatens (at least nearly) everyone. Also similar is that people are reluctant to recognize the peripheral damage - police brutality decreases the quality of government and capacity for civic engagement for everyone, not just the victims. Things I don't like about this comparison: The idea of personal liability for programmers because bugs because internet insecurity is an incredible abstraction. Compared to, for example, police officers who literally break down people's doors and shoot them, it's pretty hard to see the similarity in terms of the connection. Also: a company that decides to deploy a product that contains bugs has an opportunity to audit the software in order to prevent that. There's really no similarity in that respect. These cops know better - nobody thinks that breaking down someone's door in the middle of the night and terrorizing their family is proper behavior for an adult in a free society. But they do it anyway. This is malicious, horrific conduct and it's a stretch to say that liability is improper for the perpetrators.