Oh, the Poor Babies

The New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has a sad over a bill that would require cops to carry their own liability insurance.

I literally could not give less of a sh$# about their feelings about this.

You have a culture, and a contract, that makes any sort of accountability nearly impossible, so it's time to fight your evil with the evil if the insurance companies.

There are a lot of indicators that can find a likely bad cop, but police departments almost universally refuse to use this data.

Insurance companies will use this data, and jack up the rates for high rise officers.

What's more, they keep track of the cops that bounce from department to department following incidents.

Normally bad cops cost the taxpayer.  Let them pay their own way 

One of many ideas floated as a solution to police misconduct issues is the requirement that officers carry their own insurance. Almost every law enforcement officer is currently indemnified by the towns and cities that employ them, ensuring they’re never personally responsible for any judgments or settlements stemming from their misconduct.

And that’s a very small percentage of civil rights lawsuits. Far more frequently, officers are allowed to walk away from these lawsuits with application of qualified immunity, a Supreme Court-created doctrine that says officers can’t be held accountable if any “reasonable” officer would not have immediately understood their actions violated constitutional rights.

The liability insurance theory goes like this: officers who become uninsurable due to multiple lawsuits will become unemployable. Given that most law enforcement agencies currently do as little as possible to discipline officers who engage in rights violations and misconduct, any nudge of the needle towards the accountability ideal is welcome.