8 ms·

I have an engineering question: Is there any negative feedback for police who violate peoples rights like this? I don't mean theoretically. I mean practically,

• pc86 9y ago
  What sort of negative feedback do you mean? Termination/jail time, negative annual reviews, or something else?
  • adekok 9y ago
    I mean any negative feedback. A stern finger-wagging isn't negative feedback.
• alyandon 9y ago
  The only negative consequences are to the taxpayer that has to pay to settle these things out of court. Would be nice if the arresting officers were held financially liable to some degree and then you can bet they'd make a better effort to be sure they were making lawful arrests.
  • 0x445442 9y ago
    This is an interesting thought. Like other professions which have license to affect an individual physically, such as doctors, perhaps the first responders should carry some type of "malpractice" malpractice insurance.
    • Spivak 9y ago
      It's turtles all the way down though. If police need to carry malpractice insurance then the cost will have to be built into salary which is paid by the taxpayers. It might be cheaper to just have the state pay out then pay for a bunch of individual insurance policies.
      • tombrossman 9y ago
        Not necessarily, they can move to another police department if they get fired for wrongdoing at their current job. This happens frequently. An insurance company underwriting police malpractice policies wouldn't go for that, they would track the officer's claims history and deny coverage (or make it prohibitively expensive), same as if you kept wrecking cars, submitting claims, and switching car insurance companies. When the state pays directly, there is no incentive for the individual to behave. If the state paid the officer's salary plus a standard 'allowance' equal to the cost of police malpractice insurance for an officer with no claims, then the incentive is to keep their record clean or pay higher rates out of pocket for misbehaviour.
      • codazoda 9y ago
        The only difference I can see is that, like your car policy, if you have to pay a claim your rates go up. That would cause someone not to want a claim filed against them because their salary goes down (assuming the department doesn't just raise their salary to compensate). Still, I think you're right, the tax costs would just go up.
        • BoiledCabbage 9y ago
          Yes, but there is now incentive to weed out the few officers that are the source of all the complaints. The ones that give good officers a bad name and are a walking lawsuit waiting to happen. Noone (neither police nor citizens) want them on the force as they make everyone's life more difficult. But right now there is zero incentive to remove them, and only a union fighting to back them no matter what. I'm assuming if you have a stream of 20-30+ excessive force complaints against you over the past two years, based on past behavior you are very likely to have them in the future and be the cause of a terrible situation leading to a lawsuit.
      • adekok 9y ago
        The point is to make the individuals pay for their own misdeeds. Like car insurance. If you have a clean record, your car insurance is low. If you have multiple at-fault claims, your insurance is prohibitive. Why can't we do the same for professional services? The individual who acts ethically ends up with lower insurance than the individual who acts unethically. And at the same salary, the ethical person will take more money home. That's individual incentive.
    • gmiller123456 9y ago
      From the article: >Adelman sued the officer and DART.
  • monkmartinez 9y ago
    Yeah! Let those men and women making $55k a year pay for their "arrest insurance!" /s This is a terrible idea for so many reasons, I find it hard to believe it was brought up. Part of the reason why Doctors earn/charge so much is due to the insurance they must carry. I am a first responder and I would gladly carry insurance if I was compensated for it. Taken one step further, I would now like to be compensated for the exposure to disease, injury, environmental toxins, and more. Maybe we should strike and show the public how much they get for $55k a year?
    • snakeanus 9y ago
      > $55k a year This is actually a LOT. My mother who even has a PHD and works as a teacher only makes 16.8k per year.
      • ouid 9y ago
        it's not, it's slightly lower than the gdp per capita for the US.
        • barrkel 9y ago
          Don't confuse mean with median. Someone earning the mean will be well above the median (i.e. earning more than most people) because the mean is skewed by the very well off.
          • ouid 9y ago
            I wasn't arguing that it was the mean, I was arguing that it's not a lot.
            • dsp1234 9y ago
              $55k is just under the median 'household' income ($59k), so it may not be a lot, but it's more than a lot of people have.
          • mikestew 9y ago
• burkaman 9y ago
  Their employer can be sued, like in this case and the other referenced in the article. I don't think there is any significant feedback for individual officers unless these suits become common.
• dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Nothing consistent or substantial enough to have any meaningful effect.
• SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  From a controls standpoint, it's clear there's no negative feedback sufficient to offset the feedback from getting their way.
• vaadu 9y ago
  Feedback could work if the fiction of qualified immunity were eliminated. If police officers were held to the same criminal standards as non-police it would make them think twice.