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> Chances are Robbins will receive a settlement I think this is underscores the biggest issue. Mistakes are made by these power-hungry ignorant police officers

> Chances are Robbins will receive a settlement I think this is underscores the biggest issue. Mistakes are made by these power-hungry ignorant police officers, usually due to their fragile ego, and then they face little consequences. Someone sues and gets a nice settlement. Nothing changes. Taxpayers are taking the brunt instead of the police officer. The offending officer will likely get a slap on the wrist, or if it's a really bad mistake that went viral they might choose an early, comfortable retirement. In order for change to happen, police officers need to be held accountable for their actions. Not sure how to implement that but I think that would result in police officers being much more careful about their conduct.

oh_sigh 6y ago
Taxpayers should take the brunt of the damage in the end. They hire the police after all.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  They pay their salaries. They do not hire them. Big difference.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    They hire (i.e. elect) the people that hire them.
    - frostwhale 6y ago
      They hire (i.e. elect) the people that hire the people that decide who hires them.
      - strogonoff 6y ago
        Looking from the outside, seems like the police system used to work at some point in the past and now it doesn’t. Maybe taxpayers taking the brunt of it in case of police misbehavior is a case of a system “failing loudly”, a useful indicator that the police doesn’t work well and people should elect differently in favor of revamping the police according to current realities.
        filoeleven 6y ago
        > seems like the police system used to work at some point in the past and now it doesn’t What decade(s) would you place that time frame in?
        strogonoff 6y ago
        No idea, presumably it stopped working some time after it was established and before recent years? It must have worked originally.
        TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
        I don’t agree. I think it was always broken, but it’s only since police body cams and everyone carrying a video camera (10 years, give or take a few years) that problem has been given a voice.
        strogonoff 6y ago
        Police must have satisfied the primary requirements posed by the people at some point in the past, if we are to believe that democracy works at all. Requirements must have evolved since then, which is to be expected. Sometimes it feels like the prevailing sentiment is just “police hurts us so we need to create outrage until they remove police and/or give us a better one”, which is understandable but remembering that how police works today is in fact a result of democratic process (and that indeed it works for the taxpayer) might be useful—less “us vs. them” and more “taxpayer today vs. taxpayer of the past”.
        filoeleven 6y ago
        Okay. You mentioned looking from the outside, so I was curious if there was some “golden age” from news reports or our exported entertainment that you had in mind. A lot of domestic folks think that time was the 1950s, and I wondered if that was your impression as well. It was certainly mine until I started looking into things further. The reality is that the police in the US are here to enforce the social order, not to protect the public.[0] It has always been that way; as the sibling poster said, it’s just more visible now. I think we have the chance to improve policing now because of that visibility. Edit: I’m adding this paragraph in response to your other comment, which says in part “Police must have satisfied the primary requirements posed by the people at some point in the past, if we are to believe that democracy works at all.” I understand what you’re saying, but we are still struggling to get equal representation up and running here. Democracy may or may not work, but lots of people were excluded from the process until very recently, and there are continuing efforts to keep it that way. So in a very narrow sense, sure, police did what they were designed to, which is to enforce the social order. The social order is messed up, therefore police are too and always have been. [0] See this Supreme Court case from 2005; a lower court ruling from 1981 says the same thing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonza...
    - AdrianB1 6y ago
      Not really. In many places there are huge influences from political parties and heavy stakeholders. For example, in California a well-known financial mogul got a few DAs appointed - it was an election but one could call it "buy a DA".
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > They do not hire them. Big difference. They ultimately supervise and choose the people that hire the police, the people that set the policies for the police, and the people (both in and out of police departments) directly responsible for holding police accountable.
    - dbt00 6y ago
      Inability to fire police officers, even for gross misconduct including unlawful homocide is baked in to many jurisdictions due to PBA contracts.
      - oh_sigh 6y ago
        Did the PBA unilaterally decree what the contracts would be or was there a counterparty?
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Inability to fire police officers, even for gross misconduct including unlawful homocide is baked in to many jurisdictions due to PBA contracts. I'm pretty sure there is no jurisdiction in which you can't fire a police officer convicted of unlawful homicide. It's true prosecutors aren't likely to prosecute police officers, but that's because they are elected officials that are held accountable for being sufficiently successful in prosecuting non-cops, but not for prosecuting cops. Second, while both Constitutional law regarding due process rights attached to public civil service employment and employment contract terms may make it difficult, time consuming, and procedurally involved to fire police officers, which also makes agencies reluctant to even initiate the process, you are significantly overstating the case even absent criminal prosecution. And third, the only reason it is possible to have contract terms that make it so hard to fire police officers for misconduct is that the the law doesn't set out accountability standards or qualifications for continuation in such roles that would make such a contract void as contrary to public policy. Which is, even if a negative choice, a legislative policy choice by elective representatives. And the decision to enter into such contracts, given that they are allowed, is also a decision made by publicly accountable officials. So, a whole lot of different, directly publicly accountable decision makers are necessarily involved, either actively or tacitly, in permitting bad cops to continue to do bad things. If the public cared to stop it, they could through the democratic process.
- jeltz 6y ago
  Sure, but until we start charging police with crimes nothing will change.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Why shouldn't they hire them under the terms that if they unlawfully cause harm they will bear the brunt of repaying the settlement?
4eor0 6y ago
SCOTUS ruled last December Federal law allows suing government agents who violate Constitutional rights. https://ij.org/press-release/u-s-supreme-court-rules-unanimously-you-may-sue-government-agents-for-damages-when-they-violate-your-individual-rights/ https://ij.org/press-release/u-s-supreme-court-rules-unanimo... Cities should start suing on behalf of their citizens.
- giantg2 6y ago
  But it has to be previously defined in case law or something that is considered defacto through an egregious violation, right? On a side note, do you know of any case law that shows that leaving a charge stand when you know it is false (no detention/custody) is a violation of Constitutional rights? I have a situation that this would be useful for.
pstuart 6y ago
Police departments should be self-insured, backed by their pensions. They'll never change their behavior unless properly incentivized to do so.
- rriepe 6y ago
  It's important that it's at the department level and not the individual level too. It turns the "looking the other way for other officers" dynamic on its head right away.
  - xsmasher 6y ago
    Disagree - that sets up an incentive for everyone to cover for bad apples. To get the right incentives it's important that it's at the individual level to price bad cops out of the market.
- ip26 6y ago
  Maybe. If a single claim could wipe out the pension, there's a good chance the department would close ranks even harder than today. You could hope they would police themselves better, but once something does happen, Johnny Idiot's mistake has put the entire department's pension at risk. This sets up bad incentives.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    > You could hope they would police themselves better A fool's errand, we know that won't happen on the basis of "doing the right thing". It would have to be structured so that covering up only makes it worse, it is a perfect subject for applying game theory to steer the outcomes.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      Yep, currently dealing with a situation like this. The captain of the troop closed my complaint against one of the troopers without any investigation or justification. They didn't even notify me.
ipsocannibal 6y ago
How about we tie settlements and complaints to police compensation packages? Do any police departments in the US do this now? The idea would be the more of these situations you expose your department to through your own misconduct the more you are financially penalized. You lose pay, matching 401K contributions, access to a pension. This won't be a panacea but it could help tax payers recoup some of the costs incurred by bad cops.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  How about if we determine that the officer acted unlawfully we just take the entire settlement out of the cops pay including any pay he may get from the state or indeed any other employer under the same terms we take money owed to the IRS. Cost the state a million dollars because you abused or killed somebody congrats you will now be poor for the rest of your life. 1/3 of 1% of the US works in law enforcement its absurd for the other 99.66% of us to vote in bad terms for everyone unless 70% of us believe those bad terms apply to someone else like a minority.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Okay so this is a genuinely terrible idea because then nobody would be a police officer. Malpractice insurance exists specifically because doctors will make mistakes that harm their patients in hugely expensive ways either in the costs to fix the problem or suffering their patient now has to live with. Everyone makes mistakes at work and so this scheme just produces a workforce with a high luck stat. Look, I have no sympathy for police officers who intentionally do harm but this isn’t the way to weed them out.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      The law already strongly protects cops who make mistakes. To continue the malpractice analogy a doctor who failed to order a test that ought to have been ordered given the patients symptoms and fails to diagnose a condition leading to the patients preventable death would be a victim of malpractice. The current and suggested practice is for the government to provide what amounts to errors and omissions coverage similar to professional liability insurance to all police officers. What isn't normally covered by malpractice insurance is reckless, illegal, or intentional acts. https://equotemd.com/blog/common-exclusions-for-medical-malpractice-insurance/ https://equotemd.com/blog/common-exclusions-for-medical-malp... I'm saying that cops ought to be legally liable for the classes of acts that wouldn't normally be covered by professional insurance. Planting drugs, recklessly shooting someone without ensuring that they actually have a gun not a cell phone in their hand, assaulting someone because you can. Hey how about using a flimsy pretext to search someone's anus for drugs! All things that haven happened in recent years! Reckless or illegal acts are almost certainly uninsurable at any reasonable price because protection for such acts would ultimately be very expensive because in a world where your union keeps you from being held accountable and the law keeps you from being sued personally people would do them. Malpractice insurance for cops would probably be overkill for actually reasonable mistakes and amount to enriching insurers while it would be useless to solve more serious issues. It is an interesting solution searching for a viable problem.
Shivetya 6y ago
Nothing will change as long as we have public employee unions. Nothing. They had such control over politicians at all levels people should honestly be frightened. Through that control they protect abuse by their members either individually or as a whole unlike private sector unions there is no accountability, the contracts are actually written to forbid any real means to hold members or the union as a whole accountable for actions. So unless they are reigned in nothing is ever going to change. More likely you will be told and you will buy into the idea that more money and more staffing is needed. and nothing will change except the public will be on the hook for even larger and more outlandish suits and worse pensions
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Public sector unions are fine. Police unions are a problem.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I don't really think so. Even FDR was against public unions.
    - UncleMeat 6y ago
      FDR wasn't God. He can be wrong about stuff.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        Sure, but I haven't heard much of an argument against his stance. This is especially interesting since he was a very progressive and pro-union leader. This is just a small excerpt. "All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters."
toast0 6y ago
It's going to be hard to tie financial responsibility to individual officers in a way that doesn't ultimately come back to tax dollars anyway. Most likely if you hold officers financially responsible as a rule, they'll take out errors and omissions policies. Salaries may be raised to pay for premiums, but either way it's tax payer money. The insured pool would probably be police officers from a wider area, but still tax payer money. So if you ended up getting a claim paid by insurance, it's just coming from a wider pool of tax payers. If you only allowed people to be a police officer if they were wealthy enough to pay a judgement, that would be pretty gross.
- fgonzag 6y ago
  If you force officers to carry malpractice insurance, the city only pays the base premium for a spotless record to the officers (collectively negotiated by the union most likely), anything extra is supposed to come out of their pockets. The insurance would probably disqualify gross negligence too, so police officers as a whole would have to be a lot more careful. It is far from an ideal solution but it should help start getting the ball rolling towards a more professional and transparent police force.
  - tqi 6y ago
    I think the problem with this proposal is the us vs them mentality of police departments. I would expect that cops will continue to close ranks around the bad cops, and use these insurance claims as a tool against those that don't.
  - iaw 6y ago
    This is the most free-market approach to resolving police brutality that I've seen so far. With no ideal solutions sometimes the pragmatic ones are the best.
    - TomSwirly 6y ago
      Why is "free market" a good idea in this case? What's wrong with simply _enforcing the law_ on police officers?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fnord77 6y ago
police unions, the only union americans appear to support, are very powerful.
avs733 6y ago
I struggle with labeling them mistakes. They aren't 'mistakes' as in 'oopsie', they are cops prioritizing their pride and ego over their responsibilities. When this happens as frequently as it does, it is not a mistake. Ignorance and fragile ego is not a mistake...they are a choice. Just as someone who is prosecuted in this country for stealing food to survive is treated as making a choice, not a 'mistake'. Where I disagree with the more recent discussion of police brutality is this idea that they should be financially responsible instead of tax payers. Taxpayers should be responsible. These are people hired by the state for purposes defined by elected officials. We, the voters/taxpayers should bear financial responsibility for their actions...we should bear the financial responsibility for any actions done by government responsibility because they are done in our name. However, financial penalties are not justice. These cops should not be financially penalized, they should be criminally charged because they are committing crimes. If it isn't a crime, that is something that should be fixed. That should be the norm not a rarity. The criminal justice system is our method of accountability for citizens, it should especially be the system of accountability for them. If that fails, the answer isn't the financial accountability. It isn't completely irrational to say 'you acted outside of the norms of the justice system as an officer entrusted with its authority, therefore you are not entitled to its protections'. As a strawman, if vigilantes handled violence committed by police officers do you think excessive violence by police would stop? It would be an ugly but interesting experiment.
TomSwirly 6y ago
> Mistakes The video makes it clear - it wasn't a mistake. The cop deliberately broke the law because he wanted to. > police officers need to be held accountable for their actions. Not sure how to implement that Why is the idea of simply enforcing the existing laws out of the question? The video shows two people in a uniform assaulting another. The two people in uniform should be charged with criminal assault in exactly the same way it would be the other way around. The point is that the United States is a lawless country, where "lawmakers" and "law enforcement" commit crimes at will, in public, and laugh about it.

oh_sigh 6y ago

Taxpayers should take the brunt of the damage in the end. They hire the police after all.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
They pay their salaries. They do not hire them. Big difference.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  They hire (i.e. elect) the people that hire them.
  - frostwhale 6y ago
    They hire (i.e. elect) the people that hire the people that decide who hires them.
    - strogonoff 6y ago
      Looking from the outside, seems like the police system used to work at some point in the past and now it doesn’t. Maybe taxpayers taking the brunt of it in case of police misbehavior is a case of a system “failing loudly”, a useful indicator that the police doesn’t work well and people should elect differently in favor of revamping the police according to current realities.
      - filoeleven 6y ago
        > seems like the police system used to work at some point in the past and now it doesn’t What decade(s) would you place that time frame in?
        strogonoff 6y ago
        No idea, presumably it stopped working some time after it was established and before recent years? It must have worked originally.
        TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
        I don’t agree. I think it was always broken, but it’s only since police body cams and everyone carrying a video camera (10 years, give or take a few years) that problem has been given a voice.
        strogonoff 6y ago
        Police must have satisfied the primary requirements posed by the people at some point in the past, if we are to believe that democracy works at all. Requirements must have evolved since then, which is to be expected. Sometimes it feels like the prevailing sentiment is just “police hurts us so we need to create outrage until they remove police and/or give us a better one”, which is understandable but remembering that how police works today is in fact a result of democratic process (and that indeed it works for the taxpayer) might be useful—less “us vs. them” and more “taxpayer today vs. taxpayer of the past”.
        filoeleven 6y ago
        Okay. You mentioned looking from the outside, so I was curious if there was some “golden age” from news reports or our exported entertainment that you had in mind. A lot of domestic folks think that time was the 1950s, and I wondered if that was your impression as well. It was certainly mine until I started looking into things further. The reality is that the police in the US are here to enforce the social order, not to protect the public.[0] It has always been that way; as the sibling poster said, it’s just more visible now. I think we have the chance to improve policing now because of that visibility. Edit: I’m adding this paragraph in response to your other comment, which says in part “Police must have satisfied the primary requirements posed by the people at some point in the past, if we are to believe that democracy works at all.” I understand what you’re saying, but we are still struggling to get equal representation up and running here. Democracy may or may not work, but lots of people were excluded from the process until very recently, and there are continuing efforts to keep it that way. So in a very narrow sense, sure, police did what they were designed to, which is to enforce the social order. The social order is messed up, therefore police are too and always have been. [0] See this Supreme Court case from 2005; a lower court ruling from 1981 says the same thing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonza...
  - AdrianB1 6y ago
    Not really. In many places there are huge influences from political parties and heavy stakeholders. For example, in California a well-known financial mogul got a few DAs appointed - it was an election but one could call it "buy a DA".
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > They do not hire them. Big difference. They ultimately supervise and choose the people that hire the police, the people that set the policies for the police, and the people (both in and out of police departments) directly responsible for holding police accountable.
  - dbt00 6y ago
    Inability to fire police officers, even for gross misconduct including unlawful homocide is baked in to many jurisdictions due to PBA contracts.
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      Did the PBA unilaterally decree what the contracts would be or was there a counterparty?
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Inability to fire police officers, even for gross misconduct including unlawful homocide is baked in to many jurisdictions due to PBA contracts. I'm pretty sure there is no jurisdiction in which you can't fire a police officer convicted of unlawful homicide. It's true prosecutors aren't likely to prosecute police officers, but that's because they are elected officials that are held accountable for being sufficiently successful in prosecuting non-cops, but not for prosecuting cops. Second, while both Constitutional law regarding due process rights attached to public civil service employment and employment contract terms may make it difficult, time consuming, and procedurally involved to fire police officers, which also makes agencies reluctant to even initiate the process, you are significantly overstating the case even absent criminal prosecution. And third, the only reason it is possible to have contract terms that make it so hard to fire police officers for misconduct is that the the law doesn't set out accountability standards or qualifications for continuation in such roles that would make such a contract void as contrary to public policy. Which is, even if a negative choice, a legislative policy choice by elective representatives. And the decision to enter into such contracts, given that they are allowed, is also a decision made by publicly accountable officials. So, a whole lot of different, directly publicly accountable decision makers are necessarily involved, either actively or tacitly, in permitting bad cops to continue to do bad things. If the public cared to stop it, they could through the democratic process.
jeltz 6y ago
Sure, but until we start charging police with crimes nothing will change.
michaelmrose 6y ago
Why shouldn't they hire them under the terms that if they unlawfully cause harm they will bear the brunt of repaying the settlement?

4eor0 6y ago

SCOTUS ruled last December Federal law allows suing government agents who violate Constitutional rights. https://ij.org/press-release/u-s-supreme-court-rules-unanimously-you-may-sue-government-agents-for-damages-when-they-violate-your-individual-rights/ https://ij.org/press-release/u-s-supreme-court-rules-unanimo... Cities should start suing on behalf of their citizens.

giantg2 6y ago
But it has to be previously defined in case law or something that is considered defacto through an egregious violation, right? On a side note, do you know of any case law that shows that leaving a charge stand when you know it is false (no detention/custody) is a violation of Constitutional rights? I have a situation that this would be useful for.

pstuart 6y ago

Police departments should be self-insured, backed by their pensions. They'll never change their behavior unless properly incentivized to do so.

rriepe 6y ago
It's important that it's at the department level and not the individual level too. It turns the "looking the other way for other officers" dynamic on its head right away.
- xsmasher 6y ago
  Disagree - that sets up an incentive for everyone to cover for bad apples. To get the right incentives it's important that it's at the individual level to price bad cops out of the market.
ip26 6y ago
Maybe. If a single claim could wipe out the pension, there's a good chance the department would close ranks even harder than today. You could hope they would police themselves better, but once something does happen, Johnny Idiot's mistake has put the entire department's pension at risk. This sets up bad incentives.
- pstuart 6y ago
  > You could hope they would police themselves better A fool's errand, we know that won't happen on the basis of "doing the right thing". It would have to be structured so that covering up only makes it worse, it is a perfect subject for applying game theory to steer the outcomes.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    Yep, currently dealing with a situation like this. The captain of the troop closed my complaint against one of the troopers without any investigation or justification. They didn't even notify me.

ipsocannibal 6y ago

How about we tie settlements and complaints to police compensation packages? Do any police departments in the US do this now? The idea would be the more of these situations you expose your department to through your own misconduct the more you are financially penalized. You lose pay, matching 401K contributions, access to a pension. This won't be a panacea but it could help tax payers recoup some of the costs incurred by bad cops.

michaelmrose 6y ago
How about if we determine that the officer acted unlawfully we just take the entire settlement out of the cops pay including any pay he may get from the state or indeed any other employer under the same terms we take money owed to the IRS. Cost the state a million dollars because you abused or killed somebody congrats you will now be poor for the rest of your life. 1/3 of 1% of the US works in law enforcement its absurd for the other 99.66% of us to vote in bad terms for everyone unless 70% of us believe those bad terms apply to someone else like a minority.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Okay so this is a genuinely terrible idea because then nobody would be a police officer. Malpractice insurance exists specifically because doctors will make mistakes that harm their patients in hugely expensive ways either in the costs to fix the problem or suffering their patient now has to live with. Everyone makes mistakes at work and so this scheme just produces a workforce with a high luck stat. Look, I have no sympathy for police officers who intentionally do harm but this isn’t the way to weed them out.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    The law already strongly protects cops who make mistakes. To continue the malpractice analogy a doctor who failed to order a test that ought to have been ordered given the patients symptoms and fails to diagnose a condition leading to the patients preventable death would be a victim of malpractice. The current and suggested practice is for the government to provide what amounts to errors and omissions coverage similar to professional liability insurance to all police officers. What isn't normally covered by malpractice insurance is reckless, illegal, or intentional acts. https://equotemd.com/blog/common-exclusions-for-medical-malpractice-insurance/ https://equotemd.com/blog/common-exclusions-for-medical-malp... I'm saying that cops ought to be legally liable for the classes of acts that wouldn't normally be covered by professional insurance. Planting drugs, recklessly shooting someone without ensuring that they actually have a gun not a cell phone in their hand, assaulting someone because you can. Hey how about using a flimsy pretext to search someone's anus for drugs! All things that haven happened in recent years! Reckless or illegal acts are almost certainly uninsurable at any reasonable price because protection for such acts would ultimately be very expensive because in a world where your union keeps you from being held accountable and the law keeps you from being sued personally people would do them. Malpractice insurance for cops would probably be overkill for actually reasonable mistakes and amount to enriching insurers while it would be useless to solve more serious issues. It is an interesting solution searching for a viable problem.

Shivetya 6y ago

Nothing will change as long as we have public employee unions. Nothing. They had such control over politicians at all levels people should honestly be frightened. Through that control they protect abuse by their members either individually or as a whole unlike private sector unions there is no accountability, the contracts are actually written to forbid any real means to hold members or the union as a whole accountable for actions. So unless they are reigned in nothing is ever going to change. More likely you will be told and you will buy into the idea that more money and more staffing is needed. and nothing will change except the public will be on the hook for even larger and more outlandish suits and worse pensions

Pfhreak 6y ago
Public sector unions are fine. Police unions are a problem.
- giantg2 6y ago
  I don't really think so. Even FDR was against public unions.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    FDR wasn't God. He can be wrong about stuff.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      Sure, but I haven't heard much of an argument against his stance. This is especially interesting since he was a very progressive and pro-union leader. This is just a small excerpt. "All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters."

toast0 6y ago

It's going to be hard to tie financial responsibility to individual officers in a way that doesn't ultimately come back to tax dollars anyway. Most likely if you hold officers financially responsible as a rule, they'll take out errors and omissions policies. Salaries may be raised to pay for premiums, but either way it's tax payer money. The insured pool would probably be police officers from a wider area, but still tax payer money. So if you ended up getting a claim paid by insurance, it's just coming from a wider pool of tax payers. If you only allowed people to be a police officer if they were wealthy enough to pay a judgement, that would be pretty gross.

fgonzag 6y ago
If you force officers to carry malpractice insurance, the city only pays the base premium for a spotless record to the officers (collectively negotiated by the union most likely), anything extra is supposed to come out of their pockets. The insurance would probably disqualify gross negligence too, so police officers as a whole would have to be a lot more careful. It is far from an ideal solution but it should help start getting the ball rolling towards a more professional and transparent police force.
- tqi 6y ago
  I think the problem with this proposal is the us vs them mentality of police departments. I would expect that cops will continue to close ranks around the bad cops, and use these insurance claims as a tool against those that don't.
- iaw 6y ago
  This is the most free-market approach to resolving police brutality that I've seen so far. With no ideal solutions sometimes the pragmatic ones are the best.
  - TomSwirly 6y ago
    Why is "free market" a good idea in this case? What's wrong with simply _enforcing the law_ on police officers?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fnord77 6y ago

police unions, the only union americans appear to support, are very powerful.

avs733 6y ago

I struggle with labeling them mistakes. They aren't 'mistakes' as in 'oopsie', they are cops prioritizing their pride and ego over their responsibilities. When this happens as frequently as it does, it is not a mistake. Ignorance and fragile ego is not a mistake...they are a choice. Just as someone who is prosecuted in this country for stealing food to survive is treated as making a choice, not a 'mistake'. Where I disagree with the more recent discussion of police brutality is this idea that they should be financially responsible instead of tax payers. Taxpayers should be responsible. These are people hired by the state for purposes defined by elected officials. We, the voters/taxpayers should bear financial responsibility for their actions...we should bear the financial responsibility for any actions done by government responsibility because they are done in our name. However, financial penalties are not justice. These cops should not be financially penalized, they should be criminally charged because they are committing crimes. If it isn't a crime, that is something that should be fixed. That should be the norm not a rarity. The criminal justice system is our method of accountability for citizens, it should especially be the system of accountability for them. If that fails, the answer isn't the financial accountability. It isn't completely irrational to say 'you acted outside of the norms of the justice system as an officer entrusted with its authority, therefore you are not entitled to its protections'. As a strawman, if vigilantes handled violence committed by police officers do you think excessive violence by police would stop? It would be an ugly but interesting experiment.

TomSwirly 6y ago

> Mistakes The video makes it clear - it wasn't a mistake. The cop deliberately broke the law because he wanted to. > police officers need to be held accountable for their actions. Not sure how to implement that Why is the idea of simply enforcing the existing laws out of the question? The video shows two people in a uniform assaulting another. The two people in uniform should be charged with criminal assault in exactly the same way it would be the other way around. The point is that the United States is a lawless country, where "lawmakers" and "law enforcement" commit crimes at will, in public, and laugh about it.