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Comment by alyandon | Hacker News Reader

The only negative consequences are to the taxpayer that has to pay to settle these things out of court. Would be nice if the arresting officers were held financially liable to some degree and then you can bet they'd make a better effort to be sure they were making lawful arrests.

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This is an interesting thought. Like other professions which have license to affect an individual physically, such as doctors, perhaps the first responders should carry some type of "malpractice" malpractice insurance.

It's turtles all the way down though. If police need to carry malpractice insurance then the cost will have to be built into salary which is paid by the taxpayers. It might be cheaper to just have the state pay out then pay for a bunch of individual insurance policies.

Not necessarily, they can move to another police department if they get fired for wrongdoing at their current job. This happens frequently. An insurance company underwriting police malpractice policies wouldn't go for that, they would track the officer's claims history and deny coverage (or make it prohibitively expensive), same as if you kept wrecking cars, submitting claims, and switching car insurance companies.

When the state pays directly, there is no incentive for the individual to behave. If the state paid the officer's salary plus a standard 'allowance' equal to the cost of police malpractice insurance for an officer with no claims, then the incentive is to keep their record clean or pay higher rates out of pocket for misbehaviour.

The only difference I can see is that, like your car policy, if you have to pay a claim your rates go up. That would cause someone not to want a claim filed against them because their salary goes down (assuming the department doesn't just raise their salary to compensate). Still, I think you're right, the tax costs would just go up.

Yes, but there is now incentive to weed out the few officers that are the source of all the complaints. The ones that give good officers a bad name and are a walking lawsuit waiting to happen.

Noone (neither police nor citizens) want them on the force as they make everyone's life more difficult. But right now there is zero incentive to remove them, and only a union fighting to back them no matter what.

I'm assuming if you have a stream of 20-30+ excessive force complaints against you over the past two years, based on past behavior you are very likely to have them in the future and be the cause of a terrible situation leading to a lawsuit.

The point is to make the individuals pay for their own misdeeds. Like car insurance.

If you have a clean record, your car insurance is low. If you have multiple at-fault claims, your insurance is prohibitive.

Why can't we do the same for professional services? The individual who acts ethically ends up with lower insurance than the individual who acts unethically. And at the same salary, the ethical person will take more money home.

That's individual incentive.

From the article:

>Adelman sued the officer and DART.

Yeah! Let those men and women making $55k a year pay for their "arrest insurance!" /s

This is a terrible idea for so many reasons, I find it hard to believe it was brought up. Part of the reason why Doctors earn/charge so much is due to the insurance they must carry.

I am a first responder and I would gladly carry insurance if I was compensated for it. Taken one step further, I would now like to be compensated for the exposure to disease, injury, environmental toxins, and more. Maybe we should strike and show the public how much they get for $55k a year?

> $55k a year

This is actually a LOT. My mother who even has a PHD and works as a teacher only makes 16.8k per year.

it's not, it's slightly lower than the gdp per capita for the US.

Don't confuse mean with median. Someone earning the mean will be well above the median (i.e. earning more than most people) because the mean is skewed by the very well off.

I wasn't arguing that it was the mean, I was arguing that it's not a lot.

$55k is just under the median 'household' income ($59k), so it may not be a lot, but it's more than a lot of people have.

Median household income in the U. S. is $56K. In this case, the point stands...kinda.

But you're right, GDP isn't the way to measure, as GDP has been going up more than income. Which means someone is skimming, but that's a different discussion.

making $55k a year

Median household income in the U. S. is $56K.

So the person is making the same amount as the median 'household'.

if your mother has a PhD and only makes $17k/year, Its because she WANTS to in that She would rather do her job where she is at than move (geographically or career orientation-ally). People working fast food can make more than that.

Moving and finding a job in another country is not something trivial, especially if you get 17k/year.

This is a very emotion-based response to a rational post. I understand you are in the profession and it is important to you, but that shouldn't mean

> This is a terrible idea for so many reasons

So list some of the reasons, rather than just dismiss the idea.

> I am a first responder and I would gladly carry insurance if I was compensated for it.

So now it sounds like it isn't a terrible idea at all and you agree with it if compensated. The take away I get from this is "first responders are paid too little to be held responsible for their actions." Lots of professions are paid very little and are still held responsible for intentionally reckless or malicious behavior.

> I would now like to be compensated for the exposure to disease, injury, environmental toxins, and more.

Sure that's fine as well, but against has no bearing on a person being responsible for their actions. Again it sounds like a justification of "first responders don't have to be responsible for their actions because xyz other concern". And shouldn't your union be negotiating for compensation for these things?

To me it sounds like exactly a viable solution. First responders must carry insurance for extremely negligent or malicious behavior, and should have an increase in salary across the board to cover average insurance cost.

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