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A good start would be requiring police officers to carry individual liability insurance so that municipalities aren't paying for these lawsuits. If someone can
by patrickmay 7mo ago
A good start would be requiring police officers to carry individual liability insurance so that municipalities aren't paying for these lawsuits. If someone can't get insurance, they can no longer be a cop.
- sneak 7mo agoI don’t disagree, but can we really claim to have the rule of law if there is a class of people who can flagrantly violate criminal law and court orders and suffer zero criminal consequences?
- Zigurd 7mo agoMayors, prosecutors, merchants, and local press get co-opted by police. This leads to systemic failures that, unfortunately, make dealing with this in criminal law less workable. Sometimes you gotta do what works.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- SoftTalker 7mo agoIt's going to be cheaper for municipalites to have group insurance for this (or self-insure) than to have to pay the police enough that they can afford their own insurance.
- mothballed 7mo agoUltimately it's the civil authorities and upper brass that want these intrusions. The insurance issue is easily worked around by hiring green recruits at a very high "bonus" to be used as basically burner employees to burn through their insurance and do the illegal stuff under their identity. It has to be a criminal thing because the top brass and civil servants need RICO like prosecution and tossed in jail along with the guy who gets the insurance ding.
- lazide 7mo agoIt’s already a (very real) crime to do a Conspiracy to deprive someone of their civil rights, which is what you’re talking about. Occasionally someone gets sued under it, but it’s rare.
- JoshTriplett 7mo agoThe whole point of requiring individual insurance is precisely that insurance will be too expensive for people who are demonstrably high risk in that role, and less expensive for people who are low risk.
- pinkmuffinere 7mo agoSome of the additional expense would be due to an individual risk profile, and some of the expense would be due to lack of bargaining power. The expense due to individual risk profile is a feature. The expense due to lack of bargaining power is not.
- noosphr 7mo agoPolice have unions.
- direwolf20 7mo agoThen the department can pay for each officer's insurance.
- SR2Z 7mo agoThere are thousands of cops if not a million outright. I don't think this will be a problem.
- pinkmuffinere 7mo agoI don’t know if you’re familiar with how bargaining works, but you only get the price break if you can come in as a large unified group. Having millions of individuals doesn’t result in a price break. Eg There are millions of private individuals buying health insurance in the US, but they have no bargaining power unless they purchase as a unified block. Individual health insurance policies are notoriously expensive.
- SR2Z 7mo agoGood thing that police unions are notorious for being weak and ineffective, then!
- Zigurd 7mo agoIf it's uninsurable in the private market, that's a hint. Maybe they could pledge the pension fund.
- UncleMeat 7mo agoBefore that we need a vast overhaul of qualified immunity for state officials and expansion of Section 1983 to cover federal officials. It is incredibly difficult to sue state officials for violating your rights because of how qualified immunity works and Bivens is even weaker when it comes to suing federal officials.
- hn_acker 7mo ago> expansion of Section 1983 to cover federal officials I don't expect Congress to do so in the foreseeable future (regardless of how the 2026 midterms go), but I hope more states will adopt "converse 1983" laws [1]. [1] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/can-state-law-remedy-constitutional-violations-by-federal-officers https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/can-state-law-remedy-co...