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Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

Require malpractice insurance for police; require that they pay it themselves, not as part of a union or from their civilian employer. Require insurance companies to set prices solely by service record of the individual and of the unit and of the city/county/state employer.

Commit a felony, lose your insurance coverage, be unemployable. Happens to doctors; why shouldn't it happen to police?

Go to work for a misbehaving department, watch your premium rise.

Act professionally your whole career, watch your premium drop.

Everybody likes incentives here. Police don't have many right now.

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Of all the systems the US has I think the insurance industry is the last to come to mind to fix a problem.

“Tort” (insurance’s cousin) is but one of the many gods in the cathedrals people build to avoid blaming hate.

Tory is not really anything to do with insurance; it is a very old legal concept referring to any kind of job bodily harm to the interest of another.

I don't see how this isn't paid for by the taxpayer. You say the cops should pay for it themselves, but we give the cops every dollar they have so who is really paying when it's your dollar being given to the cop to be given to an insurance provider?

In truth right now, departments self insure for malpractice and spend a ton of money on litigation. They don't care how much it costs, the taxpayer always pays. You can actually get fired after being sued and you just get hired in a department the next town over, because malpractice insurance isn't going to do squat about the boys club mentality that pollutes American police departments. Doctors never protect their own over malpractice like the police routinely do, so we shouldn't even entertain using the model doctors use when it's apples and oranges to begin with.

> but we give the cops every dollar they have so who is really paying when it's your dollar being given to the cop to be given to an insurance provider?

The key point parent made was that the officer had to pay it themselves.

Every officer would (likely) start paying the same premium, but the one with 4 pending brutality charges slowly making their way through the criminal courts will be forced into retirement for lack of insurance (or outrageously priced insurance).

Not much unlike auto insurance.

The problem with this is a case against a professional tends to pull in other professionals as witnesses. You may not end up solving the problem because cops may refuse to testify against other cops. The solution is to rely on common sense, it is unknown if that will happen.

First off, who would offer insurance to individual police other than the police union?

And the police union has a bunch of influence over the other cops who might cause everyone's premiums to go up if they tell the truth?

I dunno, I think it's a good try but a more direct approach is warranted. Fire people with a history of complaints. Promote people who don't tolerate bad behavior. Vote for people who will do that, and if that means reconstituting the police force from scratch like in Camden so be it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-jersey-city-disband...

To me this makes far more sense than a indiscriminate defunding. It’s what I’ve been advocating for. Defunding the police by itself doesn’t solve the problem. Firing crooked cops does to some extent.

And in the case where crooked cops have infiltrated the department to the point where it's effectively impossible to fire just the crooked ones, shut it down and start over. Or do something better and call it "police" so that the pearl clutching causes less nerve damage.

> First off, who would offer insurance to individual police other than the police union?

Presumably the same institutions that offer other forms of professional liability insurance. I wouldn't be surprised if the police union offered insurance, but they will have to compete with other insurers in the market. In this scheme, though, if they fail to adequately adjust for an officer's risk then they will either lose money or they will have to overcharge safer officers. The likely reality is that low risk officers would flee to the cheapest insurance and the police union would be unable to protect the riskier officers from higher premiums due to the lack of low-risk officers to balance out the pool.

How much local competition is there for cop employers? I can't say I know a ton of cops but it would have to be a pretty extreme difference to actually factor into decisions on where you live.

Just solve the actual problem. Fire the cops that have lots of complaints. Promote the ones that enforce a healthy culture. Vote for sheriffs or comparable that have those priorities. Push for laws that enforce those priorities.

It's certainly no harder nor time consuming than designing and then waiting for a capitalist equilibrium. We know the actual problem, we don't need to assign a dollar value to it to prohibit it, especially since these are public employees.

This actually exists

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/22/705914833/epis...

I think the problem is that the system has historically obfuscated a lot of the malpractice.

So I think the real reform is more transparency (body cameras and other things) to make sure infractions are actually exposed.

That seems like it would end up with police being incentivised to turn a blind eye to those who can afford expensive lawyers more than they already do?

Can you explain your reasoning, because I don't follow.

Super simple: if policeman arrest rich guy who can hire good lawyer, then this guy have much higher chances to win in a court against policeman / police department and insurance company gonna have to compensate. So insurance premium gonna be higher for them in that case.

On other side piss poor suspect don't have a lawyer and capacity to get compensation by "police insurance".

When you violate someones rights the actually get compensated, instead of getting a judgement that doesn't get paid.

or gets paid by the community the officer harmed. :(

What would happen to your insuarance, if say you became part of a highly valuable but risky operation investigating crime syndicates? Sounds expensive.

"Risky" means violating the law, ignoring civil rights & hurting innocents.

If that's the only way that unit can investigate crime syndicates, maybe that operation shouldn't exist in the first place.

No - risky can equally mean getting shot in the course of duty. See also the issue of surgeons being cautious about taking on procedures with low survival rate

Only if you define "getting shot" as malpractice, which I'd consider a rather odd choice. Remember, we're talking about risk in the context of a malpractice insurance.

Isn’t this one of the reasons why US healthcare is so unaffordable?

Not that comparable unless you start issuing the insurance bills to the people the officers ticket or arrest.

Well, they do issue the bills in that we pay for the policing.

I dont think insurance is the solution. Instead take the money from the retirement fund.

are police paid like doctors?

what happened in healthcare will likewise happen with policing... where many wont serve figuring its not worth it... overall, safety will be reduced.

Honestly many of them are in larger cities.

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