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Comment by backtoyoujim | Hacker News Reader

What we need is for them to have to carry personally paid malpractice insurance that is tied to their access to qualified immunity.

And if their camera is off they lose their insurance policy. Then no more access to qualified immunity.

Being police is a luxury not a right.

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We don’t need to create a private insurance market for yet another part of American life. Other countries have real oversight bodies with teeth that build public trust. It’s important that justice is done in these cases of abuse, and it also needs to be seen to be done by the public, which builds trust in the institutions of state.

The point of insurance is they have to pay for it personally. If the government pays for insurance and also pays for penalties, we are in the same situation we are today.

Unions would never allow that, and I highly doubt people on HN will be in support for weakening Public employee unions which I think should be completely abolished

//side note, FDR agreed.... which is ironic given that most people that support Public Employee unions think we need a new new deal FDR style

why [strikethrough]would[/strikethrough] [edit:do] you think people here would oppose weakening (or abolishing) police unions?

Regulatory capture is extremely common in American life, and many of our current policing issues can arguably be attributed in some large part to overly powerful police unions. So to me this sounds like a lip-service-non-solution waiting to happen.

Insurance exists for nearly everything. The difference in this particular scenario is the party responsibility for the liability.

Do they? I'm only familiar with the IPCC in the UK, and they are basically worthless. Germany, for example, doesn't even have something like the IPCC. Are there any examples of working police oversight bodies?

>Being police is a luxury not a right.

It's a service, not a luxury.

I think the parent means that it's a career choice that in the US is quite well payed especially after some tenure, given the level of training /education required. It also comes with a ton of job protection that's rare in the US, and a pension. Couple all of that with a monopoly on violence in society, and police in the US occupy a position of unusual privilege.

It's a luxury, not a service. If we're just making blanket statements without explanation, we can invert them.

Wouldn't it be easier just to punish and fire rather than creating yet another dysfunctional market?

> personally paid malpractice insurance

Money is fungible. Even if the union doesn’t negotiate this insurance on a group level, passing along the premium could be quite easily baked into contract negotiations.

Yes, on average. But the cops more at-risk of gross misbehavior, if correctly identified by the insurance companies (big if), would still be priced out of the market.

The difference is that insurance companies can choose not to insure someone. Reputation/history isn't fungible. Presumably they have skin in the game to have actuaries figure out who doesn't get to be an officer.

Not saying it's a good scheme just that there's more at play than just money.

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