1,115 karma · joined November 23, 2014
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tAiya71mDQgtwn_F9-mN...
The hack seems politically motivated; no one can say with 100% assurance that it was caused by Russia; the DNC is a private organization, in any event, why should the citizens of the US be drawn into a war with a nuclear armed foe over their poor cyber security?
Thinking of the way Giuliani criminalized homelessness in NYC, you may be right. http://mobile.nytimes.com/1999/11/20/nyregion/in-wake-of-att...
Is the wellwater seepage the biggest problem? Guessing the other things in the list could be fixed with lots of money and infrastructure.
Indeed. The unpredictable behavior of humans occupying the same environment is key. Remove this element and things get simpler (though not simple. And v2v comms might be required.)
I suspect highways are the road infrastructure most akin to a closed track. Which is why the Otto acquisition is so interesting.
I wouldn't expect the supplier to bear this cost; it's the jailers who are doing the inspecting.
>Only one jurisdiction in my study—El Paso, Texas—reported a practice of never indemnifying police officers.145 Yet no El Paso officer personally satisfied settlements or judgments against him during the study period. The city of El Paso did, however, pay $279,000 to settle sixteen civil rights cases against its officers between 2006 and 2011. The deputy city attorney in El Paso explained that, because the city is responsible for paying officers’ attorneys’ fees, it sometimes settles claims against officers because it would be less expensive to pay a small settlement than to continue to pay for the defense of the case. From the deputy city attorney’s perspective, paying a settlement on behalf of an officer to avoid the cost of further litigation should not be understood as equivalent to indemnifying that officer.
>California allows indemnification of punitive damages if the “governing body of that public entity” finds that “[p]ayment . . . would be in the best interests of the public entity.” [How do they figure?]
>Some jurisdictions [Las Vegas, New York, Oklahoma City, and Prince George’s County] appear to have indemnified officers in violation of governing law.
>Jurisdictions may sidestep prohibitions against indemnification of punitive damages by vacating the punitive damages verdict as part of a post-trial settlement.
>Although my study shows that officers almost never contribute to settlements and judgments, I found anecdotal evidence that some government attorneys affirmatively use the possibility that they will deny officers indemnification to gain settlement leverage, limit punitive damages verdicts, and reduce punitive damages verdicts after trial— only to indemnify their officers once the cases are ultimately resolved.
>During litigation, the threat that a city will deny indemnification may discourage plaintiffs from proceeding with claims against individual officers.
http://www.nyulawreview.org/sites/default/files/pdf/NYULawRe...
Any insight into how this gets established by profession? Seems to be an entire industry offering and encouraging nurses to take out malpractice insurance, beyond whatever their employers' coverage is.
On the effort backfiring...maybe, but I don't see why it would play out the way that you describe. The criminal justice system lets these cops skate, but apparently the civil system is picking up the slack -- as evidenced by that NYC figure cited. Somebody is going to keep paying for these, I do not think there's anything the unions can do to change that fact. So the only question is who and if you can make the case to taxpayers that it sure as hell shouldn't be them, self-interest might rule and help fix this.
Edit: some clues here as to the question of personal liability of cops. From a study by Joanna Schwartz in the NYU law review:
>This Article empirically examines an issue central to judicial and scholarly debate about civil rights damages actions: whether law enforcement officials are financially responsible for settlements and judgments in police misconduct cases. The Supreme Court has long assumed that law enforcement officers must personally satisfy settlements and judgments, and has limited individual and government liability in civil rights damages actions—through qualified immunity doctrine, municipal liability standards, and limitations on punitive damages—based in part on this assumption.
>Scholars disagree about the prevalence of indemnification: Some believe officers almost always satisfy settlements and judgments against them, and others contend indemnification is not a certainty. In this Article, I report the findings of a national study of police indemnification. Through public records requests, interviews, and other sources, I have collected information about indemnification practices in forty-four of the largest law enforcement agencies across the country, and in thirty-seven small and mid-sized agencies.
>My study reveals that police officers are virtually always indemnified: During the study period, governments paid approximately 99.98% of the dollars that plaintiffs recovered in lawsuits alleging civil rights violations by law enforcement. Law enforcement officers in my study never satisfied a punitive damages award entered against them and almost never contributed anything to settlements or judgments — even when indemnification was prohibited by law or policy, and even when officers were disciplined, terminated, or prosecuted for their conduct.
http://www.nyulawreview.org/sites/default/files/pdf/NYULawRe...
A rational taxpayer should be very upset about this.