Off of taxpayer money sadly. Imo we really need a fix for this. When cops are grossly negligent the money should come out of their aggregate pension fund (or at least partially).
This is on us as voters. If we didn’t piss our pants every time a police union sneezed, we’d realize wholesale restarting police departments is precedents in even our largest cities.
As long as you keep electing clowns that let the police do whatever they want, the police will... Do whatever they want.
Of course there's a balance that has to be struck so that police are empowered enough to act. So perhaps something like settlements against the police being 30% borne by the police pension fund and 70% by taxpayers is sufficient. I think this will also make police very enthusiastic about bodycams and holding each other accountable.
it sucks.
No, everybody does not want police accountability. Half the population will fall on a grenade to prevent that. They know that the purpose of the police is to keep the undesirables in line, and they never envision that they will ever fall in that category.
The brutality is the point for them.
The problem is that the mass media sets the framing of acceptable discourse, and that mass media is in large part an ideological monoculture. And even when it's not, it is happy to present absolutely insane batshit lunacy as 'one of the two sides' of an issue.
I'm not sure what the solution is here. Forbid police from unionizing? That would probably have some bad consequences too.