Baltimore is an extreme example, but all over North America – including Canada – there are police forces where the bad officers get away with terrible shit, and all the incentives in the system encourage the “good” cops to either close ranks or simply fail to drive out the bad ones. The bad ones, in a sense, hold all the rest hostage and perpetuate a deeply ugly culture. Arguably, that turns every cop into a “bad” cop. Paying damages out of the general public purse is one of those incentives. Maybe not the biggest or the only, but one that if removed could cause that ugly culture to crumble.
A lot of people have pointed out that personal liability is not a complete solution because individual cops don’t have the kind of money it takes to pay plaintiffs’ judgments. Many have mentioned insurance. That’s one solution, and it should help drive out the bad cops.
But what about police pension funds as a source of settlement funds? Give every cop skin in the game. Make it utterly unacceptable among cops to be a trigger-happy (or fists-and-baton-happy) psycho. Watch brutality and needless killings dry up. No?
