> I'd love to see what would happen if cops had to carry doctor-style malpractice insurance, instead of the taxpayers picking up the bill for abuse settlements.
Then taxpayers would pick up the bill for the higher salary demands of officers due to the cost of insurance, and then the police unions would lobby for targeted tort reform to limit their liability and insurance costs on the basis that it would save the taxpayers money, and succeed, and the structural problems that foster abuse would manage not to be dealt with at all, and the victims even worse off. That's what.
“Let’s absolve ourselves of liability”—which is what this amounts to unless it's a cop proposing it—is just an excuse to avoid addressing the problem.
(Doctor’s malpractice insurance is not instead of their private or public employer being liable as usual under principles like respondeat superior or just plain direct liability for acts aligned with bad policy or direction, and only covers professional negligence, not criminal acts. Mere police malpractice, is—while also an issue, to be sure—not the focus of concern here, and the acts involved are the kind for which it is generally illegal to insure liability for, for good reasons. Insurance for liability incurred through murder is not a thing, and I don't think anyone who has thought it through wants it to be a thing. Except maybe prospective murderers.)
> Sure, but there’s someone managing a budget and has to decide to either hire 2 good cops or 1 expensive bad cop.
They already have to do this when the agency is liable and the cops aren't because of QI; which is equivalent to the agency self-insuring and managing risk through personnel policies and decisions.
Making the major crimes involved insurable would negate any benefit from making cops individually liable by eliminating or restricting the scope of QI.
>> I'd love to see what would happen if cops had to carry doctor-style malpractice insurance, instead of the taxpayers picking up the bill for abuse settlements.
> Then taxpayers would pick up the bill for the higher salary demands of officers due to the cost of insurance, and then the police unions would lobby for targeted tort reform to limit their liability and insurance costs on the basis that it would save the taxpayers money, and succeed, and the structural problems that foster abuse would manage not to be dealt with at all, and the victims even worse off. That's what.
Maybe that could be addressed by modifying the proposal to require that departments buy malpractice insurance individually for each of their officers, and make sure the cost of that insurance shows up on the budget of whatever department or team the officer is a member of. Basically make it more expensive (on a predicable, ongoing basis) to employ bad cops than good ones, which hopefully would then factor into personnel decisions.
Make the officers buy it personally. Have cities pay officers 110% of the base rate, such that officers with clean records get a bonus based on it. Those whose rates go up will pay the difference or leave the force.
BTW, I hate that America has become so neoliberalized that I end up needing to consider how to build a profit motive into having cops not violate constitutional rights.
Those who don't report incidents within x days of the first report should forfeit their 10% bonus for some pay period y to a pool to be split among those who do report incidents in the time frame, with those who report earlier receiving larger portions than those who report later.
It thus is always in everyone's individual best interest to try to identify incidents and report them as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately not everyone has the same sense of duty and the respect for life. Since "these bad apples" don't get punished anyway, and since the system is evidently useless from removing them from ranks, one alternative is to hurt them where it really hurts them, their wallet. I don't know of this will push the half-dirty in police forces to go all the way to the dark side since they will feel that society owes them and they need to make up for the reduction on their disposable income.
I hate that America has become so neoliberalized that I end up needing to consider how to build a profit motive into having cops not violate constitutional rights.
The sort of person who makes a good cop isn’t motivated by money. You don’t pay him to be a cop, you pay him so he can be a cop. So he can pay his bills while deriving job satisfaction from duty, honour, etc. The same way the really good programmers are in it for the love of the craft.
The instant you bring commercial incentives into it you drive away the people you really want. That’s why the military don’t do it. And why tech goes toxic when the techbros show up.
>> I hate that America has become so neoliberalized that I end up needing to consider how to build a profit motive into having cops not violate constitutional rights.
> The sort of person who makes a good cop isn’t motivated by money. You don’t pay him to be a cop, you pay him so he can be a cop. So he can pay his bills while deriving job satisfaction from...
That's likely also true of many classes of bad cops, as well (e.g. deriving job satisfaction from dominating others/exercising power over them).
I also think your kind of missing the point. I interpreted the comment on neoliberalism to be critiquing the idea that institutional solution to every problem has to be some kind of system involving money and markets. Basically, why dick around with insurance and budgets to dis-incentivize the employment of "cops who violate constitutional rights" when you should have an institution that's capable of just removing bad cops like that simply for the violations themselves.
But you're not paying them more to be a cop. For the good cop they get paid a little more, they buy the insurance with the money, nothing really changes.
For the bad cop they get paid a little more and pay a lot more for the insurance, so that it eats too much of their salary and they have to quit and find another job.
The people who are in it for honor and duty aren't going to be the ones paying the higher premiums, right?
Tech was toxic long before techbros showed up. RMS' problematic behaviour drove a lot of people away from the FSF, and he's never struck me as a man motivated by the fat stacks of cash.
Well said. I too find it disturbing that upholding Constitutional Rights has become a defensive position against people who have sworn to uphold the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
I can't even get personalized life insurance, so I think there's little chance of this working. At my height and weight, I'm considered "overweight" BMI, and they charge me for it. But I'm at 12-14% bodyfat with a 30" waist. I have diet logs to prove how healthy I eat, and training logs to prove how much I workout.
I can't even find a life-insurance insurer that will measure my waist to add context to my BMI despite the clear predictive information that contains and I get penalized for having more lean body-mass despite the fact that it is also predictive of longevity.
There needs to be some collective or individual cost to being a bad cop or the incentives aren't there to behave well. That could be financial, it could be prosecutors actually charging cops; there are many avenues that would help align incentives. Of course cop unions will fight this every step of the way.
> There needs to be some collective or individual cost to being a bad cop or the incentives aren't there to behave well
Sure, cops should not benefit from QI, at least as currently constructed (a more limited form may be appropriate and arguably even Constitutionally necessary from a due process perspective), and that may make merely negligent acts something they can, and may even be required as a condition of employment, to cover with insurance. That isn't instead of their public employer being liable (the absence of QI for private employees doesn't negate respondeat superior), nor does it mean that the important acts (which are intentional crimes) at issue in the present discussion of police abuse would (without major and undesirable changes in public policy) be insurable. That would actually dilute the goal of effective cost to being a (deliberately) bad cop.
I don't have a problem with direct liability for cops.
I have a problem when what is proposed is that as an excuse for absolving public-agency liability, or when it is suggested that civil liability for the intentional violent crimes at the core of the abuse discussion should be made insurable (which has the same problem as QI with only public agency liability, since then the agency effectively is self-insuring the crimes and dealing with individual costs of employees in it's hiring and firing policies.)
Interesting idea... The resultant increase in salary may in fact attract better police, and that could head off a large range of systemic problems itself.
Or the increased salary might constrain the headcount of police departments and keep them below the staffing level where they have the resources to bother mostly law abiding citizens over minor stuff. Either way it's a win.
What matters for changing behavior is the marginal impact of a police officer's actions on their income, not the average income of a police officer. Even if all police officers would be paid more by the current amount that a city dishes out in damages each individual officer would still face an incentive to reduce their excessive use of force to increase their own take home pay. Which is exactly the incentive we're going for here.
Then taxpayers would pick up the bill for the higher salary demands of officers due to the cost of insurance, and then the police unions would lobby for targeted tort reform to limit their liability and insurance costs on the basis that it would save the taxpayers money, and succeed, and the structural problems that foster abuse would manage not to be dealt with at all, and the victims even worse off. That's what.
“Let’s absolve ourselves of liability”—which is what this amounts to unless it's a cop proposing it—is just an excuse to avoid addressing the problem.
(Doctor’s malpractice insurance is not instead of their private or public employer being liable as usual under principles like respondeat superior or just plain direct liability for acts aligned with bad policy or direction, and only covers professional negligence, not criminal acts. Mere police malpractice, is—while also an issue, to be sure—not the focus of concern here, and the acts involved are the kind for which it is generally illegal to insure liability for, for good reasons. Insurance for liability incurred through murder is not a thing, and I don't think anyone who has thought it through wants it to be a thing. Except maybe prospective murderers.)