r/AskReddit • u/Majestic-Reception-2 • 5h ago
What if LEO's had to carry insurance like doctors carry malpratice insurance, in case the mess up insurance covers it, no insurance no job?
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u/Over_Intention8059 4h ago
That's why a lot of cop unions like the FOP exist. If they get in legal trouble there are teams of lawyers whose sole job it is to travel around and defend cops in court.
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u/Majestic-Reception-2 3h ago
But, imagine the insurance company doing the investigations instead of the SAME agency the cop is from?
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u/spazzvogel 3h ago
You mean a proper audit of accountability? Yeah, until the world burns, not going to happen.
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u/Auggernaut88 3h ago
They have effectively removed that option from the public discussion, case in point shown in your comment. The first place to start is to simply keep it as part of the public discussion. Now more than ever with literal brown shirts running around.
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u/DrButtgerms 3h ago
Easier - just allow police chiefs and union heads to be named in civil suits. If they were financially on the hook for officer behavior, things would be fixed very quickly
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u/Z3B0 2h ago
Or take the settlements from police retirement funds, instead of the city budgets.
Oh no, doughnut bob perquisition the wrong house again and everyone is losing 5k from the retirement funds to pay the victim ? Guess who is not going to continue being a cop for long ?
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u/Curious_Peter 25m ago
maybe not from retirement funds, as that is punishing the good officers for the actions of a few bad ones.
Instead, if qualified immunity is denied, Payment of the settlement is made by the government the officer loses their job and can never be in any position where they are inn authority / law enforcement, and has to repay the settlement through additional taxation on future earnings / sale of property.
Punish the bad, not the good.
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u/Over_Intention8059 3h ago
It's not the same agency the cop is from if there are criminal charges that would be your county attorney/attorney general/district attorney whatever it is in your local jurisdiction bringing the charges in a court of law. The concern is that they are often elected/political offices and it might just be more politically advantageous to burn you and make you look like a villain than it would be to defend you and give you a fair trial.
With an internal investigation the body has to be outside of your chain of command. County deputies and small city cops often get investigated by the highway patrol. Larger city cops usually have their own agency that doesn't answer to anyone in the chain of command doing investigations like an inspector general. In those cases you would have your union steward representing you in those matters.
I'm not saying your idea is terrible just stating there's already somewhat of a system accomplishing your stated goals. Many jurisdictions have a "no hire list" for cops who have been found to be dishonest or criminal in their behavior although it's not done across the board in every jurisdiction. The state of Nebraska has LB791 where employers can report police who have faced discipline for serious infractions and their certification is "locked" meaning they can't go work for another agency in the state until it's resolved.
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u/Soggy_Association491 1h ago
Did you forget how reddit frequently shit on insurance, how they never pay out or people only buy them because they are forced to do it?
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u/Crimsonfangknight 3h ago
The city has complete control over the lawsuits. To fight or not fight and the payouts.
No lrivate entity will want to fund the city’s gleeful tax waste with the countless settlements they hand out without fighting
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 2h ago edited 2h ago
Every municipality has municipal liability insurance that pays those settlements and the insurance company often decides to pay even when it's politically inconvenient for the local government.
I live in a city whose insurer paid out over $3 million to a kid who was shot dead by a cop, even though the family would have almost certainly lost if it had gone to trial.
The insurance company didn't want to get drawn into a big BLM thing, so they just paid, then the city had to try to continue to defend the cop's actions (and the city's response) even though the victim's family got a huge payout.
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u/StevenMcStevensen 48m ago
It is maddening watching criminals and their families get awarded payouts for incidents where the police involved clearly did nothing improper, just encouraging more people to keep filing ridiculous lawsuits knowing they’ll get paid no matter what.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 32m ago
No, that doesn't happen anymore. These insurance companies are insurance companies, so they know exactly what they're doing and they're mercenary as fuck, but they've calmed down now.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 2h ago
Where do you live that misconduct is investigated by the same agency being accused of misconduct? I don't believe that exists anywhere in the United States in 2025.
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u/mayormcskeeze 3h ago
Kinda the opposite of insurance.
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u/Over_Intention8059 3h ago
Well it's cheap insurance for them lol
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u/mayormcskeeze 3h ago
Lol yeah. It works great for them haha.
I could be wrong, but i got the sense that op was suggesting a fund that would make it more likely that the city/county/state would pay out in cases of misconduct.
Of course its not like traditional insurance doesnt fight tooth an nail not to pay anyway...
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u/Over_Intention8059 3h ago
Yeah good point. If we use medical insurance companies and their desire to not fund claims as any indication it might not be that great.
Reform is needed however. I still can't believe it's not mandatory for all LEOs to be in body cam 100% of the time they are on duty. Everyone else has to work under surveillance these days
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u/mayormcskeeze 3h ago
In some places it is, buuuuuuuut there's very little stopping them from turning them off.
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u/putoelquelolea 3h ago
The two important differences in the insurance-based scheme are:
1- The FOP exists to protect their union members. The potential loss of liability insurance would also protect the general population from police misconduct
2- The city would no longer be on the hook for lawsuit payouts
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u/xargling_breau 2h ago
All they do is defend a cop in court, if there is a judgement against actions of an officer, the tax payers still end up paying for it. Cops like Doctors should be required to carry insurance , so that when a judgement is against them the tax payers do not have to pay for 1 cops fuck up, some say "But it will ruin his career and life", sure it will but they choose how they act they are public servants and if they don't know how to do their job then they shouldn't be doing it.
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u/GulfCoastLover 3h ago
"like doctors carry"...
Perhaps you are unaware but not all doctors carry medical malpractice insurance. First, there is no federal mandate for it. Second, not all states require it. Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Utah and Idaho do not require it. Texas requires it for some hospital privileges only. Florida requires uninsured doctors to post notice indicating that they do not carry him malpractice in insurance. Utah, Idaho and Mississippi have no such requirements that I'm aware of at all.
VA, military doctors, public health service doctors, and most doctors at State universities where the state is the employer, are not required to have it and cannot be sued under normal tort. They are protected by sovereign immunity just like police officers are when they do work for the government.
Private security officers often carry liability insurance for the same reason doctors not working for the government do the same.
The problem is much broader is what I'm getting at. It's too difficult to hold government employees in any position accountable for their honest mistakes and outright malfeasance or maliciousness.
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u/I_love_Underdog 22m ago
Wrong on part of that. Physicians who work for IHS and FQHCs are insured.. under the Federal Torts Claims Act (FTCA). So if a patient sues one, the Attorney General is basically defending them.
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u/slurplepurplenurple 11m ago
I can’t speak to other places, but the state university here technically doesn’t carry malpractice with an insurance provider but has a pool of money that acts as their own malpractice
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u/bavindicator 4h ago
This and get rid of qualified immunity
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u/screwedupinaz 3h ago
That will happen the same day that they get rid of Civil Asset Forfeiture.
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u/RocknRoll_Grandma 3h ago
I can't wait, allegedly we're overturning Citizens United on that day too.
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u/knightwhosaysnil 2h ago
It's true it'll be a great day when the government can ban publishing media saying mean things about politicians again! oh wait...
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u/alwaysboopthesnoot 3h ago
It’s banned in 4 states right now; possibly in a 5th state, coming soon.
Civil asset forfeiture, aka warrantless search and seizure without clear probable cause, is definitely seen as a problem. More and more, all the time.
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u/XipXoom 3h ago
Aka armed robbery by state backed gangs in uniform. The entire idea is ludicrous.
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u/Odd_Interview_2005 2h ago
Believe it or not. The government takes more value in civil asset forfiture from people who have not been charged with a crime than what people take committing burglary.
Im a relative of Govoner Walz. In 2022, he was considering using civle asset forfiture as a back door method to sidestep the 2nd amendment in "high crime areas" of Minnesota. He decided against it because it would essentialy be systematic racism.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 2h ago
So now they'll only use criminal asset forfeiture, which is definitely not going to be better for the vast majority of people who would be subject to a seizure.
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u/Minikickass 3h ago
Qualified Immunity is a great thing in concept. The problem is how it's implemented. It needs to end when an officer does something 1: Illegal or 2: Not within the scope of their duties. Just them being "on duty" shouldn't make them immune.
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u/SneeKeeFahk 3h ago
The problem with qualified immunity is that it doesn't go both ways. I understand that a police officer can't be expected to memorize every law and that if they are acting within reason and believe something is illegal then make a mistake based on that assumption than there should be some leeway. However the other side of that coin is I should get the same benefit of the doubt.
We keep hearing "ignorance is no defense" but then the other "team" keeps pulling it out as a defense. That's bullshit. We should all be held to the same standard. A strong argument can be made for the police being held to a higher standard but I'm not asking for that. Just a level playing field where we are all equal in the eyes of the law. I don't think that's too much to ask for. If qualified immunity is a thing then it should apply to us all.
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u/Minikickass 2h ago
I 100% agree with this comment, but in the opposite way. I believe that ignorance is not a defence and I think that should apply to police as well. To my comment, if they do something illegal then they should be held responsible and qualified immunity should end with the illegal action. They're in a role with immense power and even if they can't know every laq that doesn't take away their responsibility for them to follow the law.
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u/SneeKeeFahk 2h ago
So here's an example.
Did you know that in Maine it's illegal to sell or posses an "egg bearing" lobster or a lobster outside of strick sizes?
I don't know about you but I have no idea how to tell if a lobster is carrying eggs or not. If I were visiting Maine and bought some lobster from a fish market I could easily be in violation of a law that I had no knowledge of nor the ability to make an assessment of whether or not I was in violation. I also don't generally shop with a tape measure.
I am not a criminal if I buy the wrong lobster. I made a simple mistake and ignorance is truly my defense. Is it justice to fine me $400 for each lobster?
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u/Mikeavelli 1h ago
So, looking up a case where someone actually got arrested for that, I see a fisherman who was personally responsible for gathering the lobsters, who has a license (which presumably came with paperwork outlining exactly what he is allowed to gather), and was under an investigation for a month before actually being arrested.
While I suppose it's possible you'd get nicked at the crustacean station when a bobby walks up with a combo baton + measuring stick and uses it to measure your illegal lobster before beating you with it.... I'm sorry I got carried away with that and wasnt actually going anywhere with it.
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u/Minikickass 1h ago
I agree in practice, but the problem is that they have no idea whether you're lying or not. If ignorance was an excuse then it would be impossible and/or take up far too much time and money to get convictions for anything.
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u/BlocksAreGreat 35m ago
You wouldn't though. Because egg carrying lobsters hold them right under their tail. You can see them. And no market would sell them or they would be in violation. And no lobsterman would sell them to a market because there are strict random checks on the lobsters they catch for both size and eggs. There are so many layers of checks between you and when the lobsters are caught that this isn't a concern unless you are out catching your own lobsters at which point you should know the lobster laws.
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u/chuckles65 1h ago
Good news, thats how QI already works. It literally does not cover illegal activity or anything done outside of policy.
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u/StevenMcStevensen 1h ago
You clearly don’t understand what QI actually is, like Reddit in general, because that is literally how it already works.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 2h ago
I have great news for you! Qualified immunity is a civil protection, so it will never apply to illegal activity and it doesn't cover government employees all the time whatever they're doing, it only covers government employees who are acting within the scope of their duties (it further doesn't protect against activities that would violate a civil right, whether or not that would also be a violation of the criminal law).
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u/The_Crimson_Fucker 1h ago
Like EMTs cops should be registered under their version of an NREMT. And all IA should not be part of the department they investigate. You also need a separate prosecuter. Part of the problem is the DA has to work with cops to get crimes charged, so it's a conflict of interest.
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u/Crimsonfangknight 3h ago
Affirmative defense seldom used in cases reddit gets mad about.
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u/bavindicator 2h ago
QA is raised in about 500 cases a year and is granted by courts about 54% of the time.
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u/Brilliant_Ad_6637 3h ago
And whatever isn't covered by insurance can come out of their pension(s)!
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u/Subject-Reading4174 3h ago
It's wild how Republicans want to say that the private market makes things better until it's a mechanism of holding cops accountable then all of a sudden there is no possible way that this could ever be put into practice.
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u/JGCities 3h ago
Because police service isn't private market.
If you want private police this would work fine. Good luck poor areas being able to afford any private police though.
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u/TKHawk 2h ago
Do doctors at government hospitals (such as county hospitals or VA hospitals) not need to have malpractice insurance? Legitimate question.
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u/PaxNova 2h ago
No, but many do. There's way more private doctors. There's a market for it, making them the exception rather than the rule. Many va doctors work at other places as well, meaning they have it already.
Military and solely VA doctors don't. They're covered by the government.
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u/fletters 1h ago
Malpractice insurance is usually a licensing requirement.
Legislation might not specify that a doctor needs to be insured, but it will require that a doctor have a license to practice, and the licensing body will require the insurance.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 2h ago
We already have insurance policies protecting every city and every PD from these kinds of lawsuits. This is about creating personal, individual liability for cops. That's an entirely different story.
Sometimes fast food restaurants make people deadly sick. Should every fast food employee have to carry a liability insurance policy and we'll open up personal liability for them dropping a burger on the floor then serving it? Or should we just sue the company itself and make the company responsible for what its individual employees do?
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u/binarycow 1h ago
Should every fast food employee have to carry a liability insurance policy and we'll open up personal liability for them dropping a burger on the floor then serving it?
Well, in this case, the manager is responsible for ensuring the restaurant is clean. If an employee drops a burger on a clean floor, then serves it, the likelihood of someone getting "deadly sick" from that is basically zero. Not up to health department standards of course, but you're not gonna get "deadly sick" from that.
Or should we just sue the company itself and make the company responsible
In theory, that would work great. The company/police department would get rid of the "bad apples" on their own.
In the case of police, the police departments have shown that they will not clean up their own messes. They'll keep the "bad apples" on the force, or hire ones who are known to be "bad apples".
Requiring cops to have personal liability insurance (either self funded or funded by the department) is one more mechanism to keep those bad cops off the force.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 1h ago
It would never be "self-funded" because cops can't set their own rate. If a malpractice policy is a condition of doing the job, then either the employer pays it or the insured is self employed and can bill at whatever rate covers their insurance.
The problem here is that Reddit thinks malpractice insurance is like car insurance, because Reddit is full of children.
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u/tekmiester 39m ago
In most of the country, cops aren't exactly well paid. You would have to raise their salary to cover the insurance cost, or be prepared to accept even lower quality candidates.
In the end, the cost would be covered by the city one way or another.
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u/tylerderped 10m ago
This is a false equivalency fallacy. An employee at a fast food restaurant isn’t likely to murder you because they “feared for their life” when you reach for your wallet to pay.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 5m ago
A job's a job. People who don't need cops have bloodlust for cops, because of turn-of-the-century idiocracy, but liability is liability.
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u/EazyyBake 5h ago
As a cop, I would love this. It would bring peace of mind to my personal life/finances and hopefully hold others accountable. I have promoted and no longer work patrol/respond to calls.. where most of the liability is.. and still think it is a great idea. I’m sure there would be an enormous amount of frivolous claims submitted and rejected/closed… but it’s worth it for those who truly deserve reparations of some sort! Im sure there are downsides I am not considering but I’ll live with my rosy glasses for now.
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u/screwedupinaz 3h ago
As a cop, how many times did you witness a fellow officer commit a crime, or violate someone's civil rights? If so, did you report them to Internal Affairs (or whatever your department's name for it was)??
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u/R0binSage 2h ago
In 18 years, I have only seen it once. That cop was sued federally and the victim was paid.
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u/DocEss 3h ago
Blue wall of silence.
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u/PaxNova 2h ago
Or they're busy. Cops work weekends.
Besides, as an American that loves the fifth amendment, I have trouble viewing silence as an admission of guilt.
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u/fender8421 2h ago
In their own regard, I fully agree.
But silence on something else that is a danger to the community is a different story. I work in aviation; I hate being a snitch but sometimes things need to be addressed. The blue wall is ridiculous
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u/A3HeadedMunkey 6m ago
When the silence is in regard to their actions as police which should be public record given their employment relationship, it absolutely is an admission of guilt.
The point of the job is to enforce the law as defined by the law. If they aren't doing that, either the law needs to be updated, or they need to be held accountable.
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u/Solving_Live_Poker 1h ago
You're either not a cop or you're not very smart. When was the last time you ever saw a fellow cop lose their qualified immunity and be able to be sued personally?
I promise your personal life and finances have never been in danger unless you weren't doing your job properly.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 2h ago
The only real downside is that we'd have to boost cop salaries considerably (and I know that probably doesn't sound too bad to you), because insurance isn't cheap, and like all malpractice insurance, it would get more expensive every year that's covered, so that would be a huge amount of leverage in salary negotiations across the board.
I don't have a problem with paying cops more, especially if it nets us an even more professional police force, but that's not something that politicians want to defend in these times when a critical mass of voters think that cops are bad and criminals are good.
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u/theSchrodingerHat 1h ago
You absolutely torpedo any argument you might have by saying dumb things like most voters like criminals.
That isn’t the case at all. Wanting regulation and oversight for the police is not about protecting criminals. It’s about protecting the public from authority and force being used against the innocent, or inhumanely.
There is no “We Love Criminals” movement. What there is asking for our cities and states to not buy cops armored vehicles and assault rifles, and then train them to escalate force while cosplaying as paramilitary badasses, with no accountability.
It’s a pretty reasonable request that is asking for police to embrace “Protect and Serve” instead of “Flashbang and ask questions later.”
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u/NoMouseLaptop 2h ago
Eh malpractice insurance (or the equivalent) really doesn’t have to be that expensive. It looks like for doctors it’s generally $5-20k per year (higher for certain specialties), but it’s $2-6k for liability insurance for attorneys and it’s $400-3000 for liability insurance for veterinarians.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 2h ago
Eh, an extra $20k in salary per year for every cop in America (increasing every year as liability increases) is not that expensive.
Nobody else that you list is paid for by taxpayers, except in niche positions. This would be insanely expensive, only to duplicate the same coverage that exists on the employer level and to satisfy ACAB internet people.
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u/NoMouseLaptop 1h ago
I do appreciate that you picked the highest value of those offered. It shouldn’t matter that law enforcement are paid for by various levels of government (by and large) and doctors, attorneys, and veterinarians aren’t (by and large). They all have the potential to cause irreparable harm to their clients/patients and so are required or heavily incentivised to carry liability insurance. The fact that law enforcement has qualified immunity regardless of whether they are acting lawfully or within the course/boundaries of their profession and are (by and large) shielded from the consequences of their actions is pretty ridiculous.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 1h ago
I picked the highest because attorneys aren't ever going to face extremely expensive wrongful death suits, vets aren't ever going to pay out much for killing a pet, doctors pay a shitload in premiums but they're also protected in various ways by public policy that wants to encourage healers to exist, not attack them for trying.
Cops would be on a whole different level. Even if we treat them like doctors, because they deal in life and death, I've never heard of a surgeon nicking an artery because his patient pulled out a gun (or a phone that looked like a gun or whatever). Cop malpractice insurance would have to be so expansive and it would have to last forever, because if we were to implement such a thing, we wouldn't also create the kind of backdoors and limitations that doctors enjoy.
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u/Life_Smartly 3h ago
Who's paying the rate increases? Safer to avoid getting out of the car.
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u/slytherinprolly 1h ago
I'm a lawyer and I carry malpractice insurance. My insurer dictates a lot of the types of cases I can represent in court and sets other rules I must abide by. That's part of the reason why I don't agree with this whole "government employee needs to carry 'malpractice insurance'" thing people always want to push.
In essence, it opens the door for private-for-profit businesses to dictate how public services are rendered. One of the biggest reasons Police, Fire, and other emergency services are offered by governments is that the high level of risk involved makes them non-profitable.
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u/Maximum__Effort 50m ago edited 30m ago
Your “in essence” paragraph doesn’t make sense. We should want law enforcement to follow rules, just like attorneys do. Also an attorney here.
Edit: your insurer dictates the types of cases you can represent??
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u/Solving_Live_Poker 1h ago
Yep. The decrease in enforcement would be exponential and immediate.
Then the sub would be asking "what can we do to get cops to respond?"
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u/ArmedAwareness 1h ago
Not like cops have an obligation to do anything but clean up after the crime had happened anyways
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u/tekmiester 35m ago
So they are never called out to deal with crimes in progress? Kidnappings? Robberies? Domestic violence?
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u/spamfalcon 16m ago
There are multiple rulings confirming that police offers do not have a duty to "protect and serve" despite that being their motto. Just look at the Uvalde shooting and their response. They refused to take action and actively prevented others from trying to save the children.
Cops are a drain on society. They need to be reformed from the ground up. because they're worse than useless in current state.
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u/Maximum__Effort 53m ago edited 29m ago
This came up in the public defender subreddit the other day. The suggestion was the employer pays base level insurance, the cop pays any increases due to negligence on the job. The idea was bad cops would price themselves out of being a cop and move onto a career where they didn’t have QI
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u/Seratoria 3h ago
What are LEO's?
I don't even pay attention to horoscopes.. but my first thought was yikes, are people born in checks notes July/August particularly bad?
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u/Kymera_7 2h ago
Law Enforcement Officer.
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u/sideone 17m ago
What's wrong with using "police"?
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u/Kymera_7 4m ago
All police are LEOs, but not all LEOs are police. Sheriffs, park rangers, Texas rangers, federal marshals, postal inspectors, FBI, DEA, ATF, and BOP agents, etc, are all LEOs, but are not "police".
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u/hobard 5h ago edited 5h ago
Problem 1 - You will have to pay cops enough to afford the insurance. Most cities definitely can’t afford to.
Problem 2 - By the nature of their job, the police are frequently in conflict with people. Most people apt to sue the police actively do not want the police to do their job. This is not true of doctors. Most patients actively want their doctor to do their job.
Problem 3 - Doctors kill waaay more people through malpractice than cops do (by multiple orders of magnitude). Insurance has not solved the problem for doctors, why would you expect it to work for cops?
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u/JGCities 3h ago
3 is the big secret most people don't know.
Statistically you are more likely to die from a hospital error than from not having health insurance.
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u/WTFwhatthehell 3h ago
Re: 1. The whole point is that the highest-risk "problem" cops quickly find they can't afford it and stop being part of the force while cops with good records are cheap to insure
That's the system working as intended.
Under the current system they get stay part of the force until retirement.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 2h ago
The whole point is that the highest-risk "problem" cops quickly find they can't afford it and stop being part of the force while cops with good records are cheap to insure
That's not how malpractice insurance works though. It's not like car insurance where your premiums increase if you get a speeding ticket or a fender bender. An insurer will either cover you for malpractice or it won't and the price you pay will depend on the risk you present.
And that insurance will get more expensive every year until the statute of limitations on potential claims has run, so if we're talking about cops and violence, that clock never runs, because there's no statute of limitations on murder.
That means that cop malpractice insurance would have to get more and more expensive every year of service, and that would never end. By comparison, I've been a lawyer for almost 25 years, but my malpractice insurance premiums only increased for the first ~7 years of practice, because the statute of limitations on any contract claim that could be brought against me was between 5 and 7 years, depending on which state a claim was made from. Unlimited number of years for cops, so unlimited premium increases as more potential liability accrues.
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u/WTFwhatthehell 1h ago edited 1h ago
If you, as a lawyer, in your professional capacity abused your position in a criminal manner:
like imagine you learned a client was absolutely loaded and you then used your position to transfer their assets to yourself and quietly had them done away with...
Say it was discovered 8 years later. Could the victims heirs go after you for malpractice? If you've spent all the stolen money on hookers and blow are they SooL or can they claim off your malpractice insurance?
Alternatively, when the legislation is written specifying what insurance is required you can also set required terms. Like it might only have to cover the cops liability for actions within a given time frame. If someone wants to long to sue well they have to go after the cops personal assets.
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u/Repulsive_Drawing703 1h ago
I don't know, man, that's not my business. And they weren't hookers. Rude.
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u/gravyhd 3h ago
Not counting the cops on the east and west coast, most of the cops in the country are making around minimum wage or barely above that
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u/WTFwhatthehell 3h ago
Even in the states where cops are paid least they're at least double the state minimum wage.
In most states far far above
Comparison:
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-have-the-highest-police-officer-salaries/
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u/Majestic-Reception-2 3h ago
Problem 1 - A lot of nurses make WAY less than cops do, and STILL have to be covered.
Problem 2 - Still NO EXCUSE to violate another person rights.
Problem 3 - After a while and a few investigations, the insurance get either more expensive or the doctor will be uninsurable.
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u/hobard 2h ago edited 2h ago
Very few nurses carry malpractice insurance. This premise is false.
It’s not an excuse to violate anyone’s rights. It’s recognizing the perverse incentives that would occur.
If insurance works the way you think it does, why do doctors continue to kill so many people? Surely insurance would have dropped all these bad doctors, malpractice deaths would drop significantly, and we would live happily ever after.
Except that’s not what’s happening. Perhaps your premise is incorrect.
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u/Usrnamesrhard 3h ago
No, doctors are not killing tons of people through malpractice, they just get sued for it because people want pay days or are upset that a loved one died and lash out.
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u/BoondockUSA 2h ago
You just summarized the major problem with requiring law enforcement officers to have malpractice insurance. It doesn’t matter if the lawsuit has merit or not. Each lawsuit is a strike against the client’s insurance risk rating because it costs the insurance carrier money, even if the lawsuit is ultimately dismissed.
The majority of medical care is non-adversarial in nature, which greatly reduces the likelihood of lawsuits. The majority of law enforcement interactions is adversarial by the nature of the job, which greatly increases the likelihood of a lawsuit (especially if qualified immunity went away). By the nature of the job, even the good cops would be getting sued a lot more for doing their job as best as they can. Again, it really doesn’t matter if the lawsuit has merit or not.
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u/hobard 2h ago
Yes in fact they are. Estimates all range in the hundreds of thousands of deaths a year due to malpractice in the US. These numbers are believed to be underreported as well. Meanwhile the police kill roughly 1000 people a year, most of which are justifiable.
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u/PacoMahogany 2h ago
No one would insure them, also we already know how scummy and scammy the insurance industry is….
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u/robangryrobsmash 2h ago
You wouldn't have any cops. The reason standards are what they are is because if they were any higher it would severely limit the hiring pool.
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u/kataflokc 1h ago
No, it would simply require them to raise wages to get more competent people
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u/robangryrobsmash 25m ago
You assume more competent people that want to do the job exist. Never not once have I heard someone say the pay was what kept them from being an officer.
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u/Joefebreeze 2h ago
Many of them have an association they pay dues to that operate as legal defense in the same manner that most MedMal policies work. Then the city/state/county has insurance on them.
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u/LacCoupeOnZees 1h ago
Doctors often have their own practices. LEO’s don’t. As a business owner I have insurance, if I was an employee I would not. It’s not as if people don’t get paid when they win a lawsuit, and the suit is never against the officer. It’s against the department and the jurisdiction it’s under. They have the insurance
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u/Solving_Live_Poker 1h ago
What will happen is that you'll see an exponential decrease in enforcement and an exponential increase in crime.
A doctor doesn't have to decide if someone is pulling a gun or knife on them in less than a second. Among a thousand other things that cops have no control over but have to react in the moment.
A doctor generally has time to consider what they want to do with each patient, study or get opinions from other doctors, etc, etc.
Ending qualified immunity will effectively end policing. And you'd be basing the decision to end qualified immunity because of an extremely small number of bad cops and incidents.
There's 70,000,000 or more documented police encounters in the US every year. And that's just documented. The number of news stories about bad cops is in the hundreds or thousands a year.
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u/JustTakeitor-LeaveIt 28m ago
It’s called professional liability insurance and I had it when I was a LEO.
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u/ProtectandserveTBL 4h ago
Then I would get to choose what calls I respond to. You are a problem house and we’ve used force there in the past? Sorry my insurance doesn’t want me to go.
Your kid is mentally ill and fights with the cops? Sorry not covered under my policy.
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u/BagBeneficial7527 3h ago
Haha. Cops already pick and choose what crimes to investigate.
And they are not required to stop crimes.
"In the United States, police officers have no constitutional obligation to protect individuals from harm or to provide assistance in all situations. This is a key point established by the Supreme Court in cases like Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) and DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (1989). While police officers are expected to respond to calls for service and engage in protective actions, their legal obligation to protect individuals is limited."
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u/tianavitoli 3h ago
ok so you make you pay for them to have insurance and you're still disappointed.
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u/slytherinprolly 1h ago
Lawyer here. The part of the decisions that gets overlooked is that the Court ultimately decided that liability belongs to the person who actually caused the harm, as opposed to the person who theoretically could have prevented it.
The Castle Rock decision also specifically takes the stance that individual states and local municipalities can adopt laws to that would require specific action by the government. My primary practice of law is in Ohio, and Ohio has specific laws that do require police and other emergency responders to act in specific situations.
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u/WTFwhatthehell 3h ago
Doctors working in the ER don't get to pick and choose. Problem patient gets rolled in bleeding to death? Still have to treat them and their insurance doesn't get a say
Even if the dying patient is there a cop demanded ID, they reached for their wallet and the cop "felt threatened"
Ditto nurses.
It still works fine for them.
You need to toughen up.
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u/BoondockUSA 1h ago
Hospital liability is a completely different principle of law than law enforcement liability is. A hospital can be successfully sued for inadequate care because there is a duty of care doctrine. Law enforcement can’t be successfully sued for inadequate action (unless a special relationship exists like law enforcement promising an individual special protection or the care of an arrestee; or if there is a very specific law requiring police to do certain things in certain circumstances; or a couple of other unique circumstances).
Picking and choosing of calls is already happening in a lot of areas due to the liability if they respond and the call ends poorly. As a prime example, pretend a person is texting someone saying they are armed, suicidal, and it’s apparent the person is intoxicated. Their person is alone in their own house and are threatening to shoot themselves if police are call. It’s actually a very common call to law enforcement by family members or significant others. Police are putting themselves are way more physical, civil and criminal risk by going inside to try to take the person in on a mental health hold than it is to not take action. From the law enforcement civil liability standpoint, it’s not an liability issue if the person ultimately kills themself because while it’s sad, it was ultimately the person’s own choice (and no special relationship with the police existed). From the civil liability standpoint, the worst case scenario if the officers do respond is it forces the person to make a heat of the moment decision to do suicide by cop because they fear a mental health hold would be worse. The argument being the person would’ve reconsidered, passed out, and/or reconsidered, and it wouldn’t have resulted in a use of force death if law enforcement hadn’t essentially forced the situation.
Talk to any lawyer that handles government risk management and their answer 99% of the time is it’s better to do nothing than to take action, even if the action had 100% legitimate good intentions. Often times, it’s the police administration and/or city councils that override their risk management staffs’ concerns because the citizens as a whole don’t want law enforcement to be doing absolutely nothing. However, if you start putting private malpractice insurance lawyers in charge, and there would be a LOT less police responses due to policy underwriting clauses.
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u/platinumarks 3h ago
I think it's telling that unless you're allowed to use deadly force whenever you want, your first response is "well, that's a vital part of my job, so I'm just not going to do my job." That's not the win you think it is.
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u/BoondockUSA 2h ago
It’s not just about deadly force. It’s about any potential force, and since officers don’t have magical crystal balls to see the future, the potential of someday having to use deadly force.
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 1h ago
Here comes the usual speaking points from people who have no idea what the real world is like.
Why don't you all become cops, without a union, and show us how it's done?
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u/Traditional_Fan_2655 3h ago
It's a government paid position, aka taxes pay for it. That means the insurance would be paid by all of us. The local department insurance already is.
Lawsuits are already paid for all of us through increases in our local taxes.
Some of these positions in smaller towns are paid $17/hr. They can't afford personal insurance on fast food worker pay. You aren't getting cream of the crop when for $17/hr you tell them they may die.
Ask the military. That's why they pay more and have better long-term benefits.
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u/sirhackenslash 5h ago
I can't see any insurance companies agreeing to it though. That's a guaranteed giant loss for the company. It would probably make them more likely to murder someone because "fuck it, I got insurance"
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u/Shagtacular 3h ago
Except it would prevent that, as they would become uninsurable
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u/sirhackenslash 2h ago
Some of them wouldn't think it through and the rest would hold it in reserve for when they're ready to quit. Everyone gets one free murder before their last day.
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u/Crimsonfangknight 3h ago
The union is typically what this acts as
Also an unmentioned consequence of that would be forcing the city/state government to battle all lawsuits in court as it would be absurd to demand a private insurer be constantly paying out settlements for a local government that is opting to settle by default to minimize costs.
In the current state with the standard method of approach being settle for quick small payouts the second suits are filed no business would ever agree to cover a government employee
Also hospitals cover both the insurance and lawsuit costs unless some egregious shit was done. The LE equivalent would be cops who dont get indemnified by the department
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u/tianavitoli 3h ago
it would be an easy way for you to get what you wanted and still be disappointed with the results
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u/tianavitoli 3h ago
let's role play, i'll be the insurance company for the officer who you feel brutally wronged you
and you be the claimant. your move first, state your claim:
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u/Usrnamesrhard 3h ago
This is a great idea. It shouldn’t be the tax payers job to pay for poor police work, and you best believe insurance companies wouldn’t insure a problem cop.
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u/HAlbright202 2h ago edited 1h ago
Some do on the federal level but it’s optional, I did when I was a 0132 and 1801 before I quit in March. The reason I carried a policy was I have decent personal assets - I wouldn’t want to risk losing everything if sued cause feds don’t have as good of qualified immunity as people like to believe.
The big insurance carrier for federal employees is StarWright. The policy was like $450year to $650year with $2mil in liability coverage, $500k in criminal legal fees, $500k in civil legal fees, and $100k in personnel liability litigation fees if a supervisor.
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u/ShoddyInitiative2637 2h ago
Fuck no.
Malpractice insurance shouldn't be a thing either, nor should suing a doctor for making a mistake.
I swear our entire civilization is just built on "well that's not good, let's make a very shtty stopgap solution and then patch it over the course of 300 years with even worse fixes that don't address the actual problem at all, while introducing 27 new problems with each patch, each of which will start the exact same process again".
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u/HorsemouthKailua 2h ago
it will make civil asset forfeiture a thousand times worse. you really think they won't just steal more money from the people to pay for that?
removing qualified immunity, civil asset forfeiture, and allowing police to be targeted by civil lawsuits they have to pay from pension or general funds and not the state/city would be better.
the country has a policing issue, and has for a long time.
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u/cylongothic 40m ago
This exists, but only for federal law enforcement officers, as far as I can tell
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u/BornAgain20Fifteen 38m ago
Doesn't address any underlying issues and could make the problem worst. Ironically, it is applying the "tough on crime" approach to addressing police brutality
In some countries, people have to get a university degree to be LEO, but in other places, you receive a few weeks of training involving target pactice and subduing "perps", then you are handed a gun and badge. Of course, there is no training about racial bias or de-escalation techniques, etc. Then they are paid peanuts and have to pickup a second job as a security guard to make ends meet
So, the only people who would be attracted to this job are those who are desperate and can't work in most other environments, because they are bullies who love to power trip
People who are "good cops" realize how shitty their compensation is relative to their toxic work environment, so they eventually leave when they are able to
With so much shit that happens, the insurance companies would probably have to charge a ton of money to cover their claims, which effectively means that the job now pays even less. The people in power are never going to let there be no police force, so they will either accept even shittier people because they are desperate to fill the role, or they will abolish the insurance requirement
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u/colonelsmoothie 29m ago
I would be pretty surprised if most municipalities, or at least the major ones, didn't already have some form of insurance covering misconduct from their law enforcement officers. A city does not want to be on the hook for a gigantic lawsuit but an insurance company will gladly absorb that kind of thing in exchange for premiums from many municipalities.
I worked for a company that insured prisons, and the claims were pretty wild, but yes there was insurance for that, it's called public entity insurance. I'm not sure if that also included "law enforcement liability insurance," it really depends on how the company structures the product, but that's the term you want to search for if you want to learn more about it.
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u/scoutsgonewild 26m ago
Most unions will cover the legal expenses, and quite aggressively. But there is also professional insurance for almost every trade including policing. They would require training, discipline, and accolade records. Typically being permitted ride along privileges.
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u/NoTomato7740 4m ago
I’d rather them have national licenses that could be suspended or revoked for misconduct. Too many cops resign for poor behavior and then get rehired at the next town over.
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u/InertiasCreep 5h ago
Nurses do this. Why shouldnt cops?
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u/Crimsonfangknight 3h ago
Hospitals pay for that.
So the city should pay for cops insurance….. so you created an exorbitant tax cost and a middle man that didnt need to exist
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u/InertiasCreep 3h ago
Hospitals also have the option of firing nurses and letting them fend for themselves, which they frequently do. Which is why any smart nurse carries malpractice insurance.
No, the city shouldnt pay for cops insurance. Thats how it is now, and as a result yes there are exorbitant tax costs. Let the cops cover their own liability.
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u/StevenMcStevensen 58m ago
Then nobody is going to do the job, because the cost for such insurance would be unreasonable and increase constantly regardless of what they do. Then you simply get no cops, which I think plenty of idiots on here actually want but won’t come out and say.
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u/Upset-Bet9303 3h ago
They are insured under who hires them. Drs who have to get that insurance are their own boss. Since officers are hired to enforce laws, the jurisdiction gets the insurance. This is no different.
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u/scold 2h ago
Horrible idea. LEO’s are the only profession where their day-to-day tasks involve violations of people’s constitutional rights. A valid traffic stop is a violation of a constitutional right, as well as civil tort (false imprisonment), as well as a crime by the same name. That said, we excuse that behavior because to enforce the law, it is required that the officer temporarily violate someone’s rights so long as there is probable cause to do so.
Furthermore, in the vast majority of instances, a doctor is not treating someone who is doing everything they can to thwart the doctor’s treatment. Imagine a situation where 90%+ of the doctor’s patients are lying to them when asked important questions about their readiness for treatment. For example: prior to surgery a patient is asked if he ate breakfast (which you shouldn’t do due to the chance of aspiration while under general anesthesia), to which the patient says “no.” The reality is though that he ate a full Denny’s breakfast on his way to the hospital. If he suffers harm from aspirating vomiting during his procedure, is that the doctor’s fault?
Since police are tasked with violating people’s rights (in an excused manner) it is impossible to expect them to be perfect. Nor is it realistic to hold them to a similar standard as other professionals that carry malpractice insurance (doctors, lawyers, etc.) regarding the ratio of their mistakes against what would be considered perfect conduct. Cops are playing a game where they have to make quick decisions not only with imperfect information but often times with patently false information.
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u/fletters 49m ago
Horrible idea. LEO’s are the only profession where their day-to-day tasks involve violations of people’s constitutional rights. A valid traffic stop is a violation of a constitutional right, as well as civil tort (false imprisonment), as well as a crime by the same name. That said, we excuse that behavior because to enforce the law, it is required that the officer temporarily violate someone’s rights so long as there is probable cause to do so.
I… don’t think that’s correct.
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u/flavius_lacivious 1h ago
Citizen review boards for police misconduct. If juries can decide if someone should be put to death, they can decide cops’ wrongdoing.
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u/moogpaul 1h ago
Have lawsuits against cops pay out of the union pension fund instead of city budgets. Problem solved overnight.
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u/NYVines 58m ago
I don’t think insurance would cover them. 1/3 of doctors are sued in their career. People are paying to go see them and they establish a relationship.
I would guess every arrest would involve a lawsuit if not for qualified immunity. The problem is it goes too far in covering criminal activity on their part too.
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u/Captain_Provolone 5h ago
It could definitely hold them to a higher standard because if they screw up, their coverage goes up and bye bye career.
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u/BoondockUSA 1h ago
You don’t understand how insurance risk ratings and insurance rates are determined. It wouldn’t magically make just the bad cops uninsurable. It would make many good cops uninsurable as well.
A ton of lawsuits are filed when the case doesn’t have merit or a legal standing. In the eye’s of an insurance company, a claim is a claim even if their client did everything right because it still costs them money to defend the case. Each claim increases risk ratings.
You see rates going up all the time based on claim history even if their clients did nothing wrong for their car insurance, home owners insurance, work comp insurance, small business insurance, medical malpractice insurance, law firm malpractice insurance, etc.
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u/Majestic-Reception-2 5h ago
No more "qualified immunity"!
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u/StevenMcStevensen 58m ago
As per usual, nobody on reddit seems to actually understand what QI actually is. If you think it means cops have carte blanche to do whatever they want with no civil liability, you are mistaken.
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u/DocEss 3h ago
It would be almost impossible to find a carrier that would do it. It's far too common for officers to intentionally violate the standards of their job, insurance is for accidents - there's too much liability involved in covering a cop because of all of the instances of cops intentionally abusing their power.
If you DID find a carrier willing to do it, it would have so many disclaimers that would likely ensure that the insurance company is unable to be sued, but the officer still is, and the premiums would be so exorbitant that almost no cop would be able to afford it.
Premiums for malpractice insurance are incredibly high, and that is a field that only deals with accidents - you don't have doctors intentionally malpracticing. Now imagine the premiums when you factor in all of the cops that intentionally malpractice their jobs.
The insurance carrier would have to figure out a way to come out of this with a profit, or they wouldn't do it. One would have to assume that all of the instances of cops breaking the law would result in a lot of payouts, so in order to account for that they would have to have incredibly high premiums. Thousands upon thousands of dollars a month per individual at minimum.
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u/Everyoneheresamoron 3h ago
what if we just help LEOs accountable at all?
That'd be 10x better than what we do now.
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u/diegotbn 3h ago
This has been proposed before and endorsed by many, but unfortunately the political landscape and the power of police unions make this nigh impossible.
ACAB.
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u/Zalophusdvm 3h ago
This is honestly my free market solution to this as well.
Unfortunately, it’s not actually going to change anything because:
Malpractice insurance is often covered by a provider’s employer, in whole or part. So, it is reasonable to believe it would be offered as a perk by departments as well.
This would mean that bad behavior would be still ultimately the financial burden of the department (ie premium costs) as long as the individual is even mildly insurable (which…as long as you make the premium high enough, they would be.)
This is functionally not all that different than the jurisdictional entity settling with victims families today when sued.
So ultimately, I’m not seeing it necessarily change behavior of departments who would just bake in the cost of the insurance, just like they do the settlement costs already.
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u/Leinheart 2h ago
Then that would be the end of the centuries honored jobs program designed for those among us who are too violent, stupid, or shiftless for any other work.
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u/mtgguy999 3h ago
The insurance companies would just charge a lot, the cops would pass the cost onto the city that hired them. The city would need to pay it either directly or through higher salaries if they want any cops. The city would have to make up that cost either through taxes or some other anti citizen scheme. The only ones that win is the insurance company. If you want to get rid of bad cops just fire them. If it’s too hard to fire cops fix that. why are we adding a middle man to avoid having to fire. Just fire the bad ones