That’s true, but cops are sort of in a separate category from most workers - they interact with the public in a way that often involves physical force (just in arresting someone) and lifetime consequences for others, even if they’re doing their jobs in a 100% ideal manner. This being a litigious society, where even “Good Samaritan” activities like pulling someone from a wreck can spawn a lawsuit, many day-to-day activities could be lawsuit fodder. Medical professionals, because of the nature of the work, are similar targets and have to have a whole system to protect them in place or they simply wouldn’t be able to work in the field.
The key part would seem to be if the police force pays for the court case. Since cops have to be pretty damn guilty for juries to find against them, it seems like a guilty verdict becomes the ideal separation point where cities let them face the consequences. Good cops (and, unfortunately, plenty of bad ones) could feel secure doing their jobs, because they won’t be held liable when following correct procedure, even if there’s a bad outcome.
It potentially provides an interesting level of granularity in liability, too. The current system, even if cops were held liable, only comes into play very rarely, in the most egregious cases, and guilty cops mostly get away with it. Even when that results in being fired, it’s trivially easy for them to find another law enforcement job in a nearby force. But if their own behavior is being tracked - as opposed to just being an issue as the result of a court case - and it follows them around from job to job, that actually makes them accountable in ways that don’t currently exist.
Yeah, exactly - and that’s precisely what’s needed.
Insurance companies like to reduce their risk - which likely means tracking things like disciplinary data on officers (before they’ve done something to merit a lawsuit). That kind of information generally can provide a good indicator of a cop who might kill someone. So ideally insurance companies could make it impossible to continue being a cop before they kill someone because they’ve got an unusual number of complaints made against them, have demonstrated sloppiness with procedure, etc.
But even in less-than-ideal situations, just being unable to be a cop because they killed someone is a step up from the situation we’ve got now, as you say.
