Chicago City Hall scrambling to cover police misconduct payouts
Chicago City Hall scrambling to cover police misconduct payouts
Just one month into the year, the city already has run through well over half of the $82 million that Mayor Brandon Johnson set aside for 2025 to cover police misconduct settlements and judgments. And more than 220 lawsuits are still pending for just three ex-cops.
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Police carrying insurance, like other professionals such as doctors and licensed engineers carry, would fix this problem for the city, and also improve civil rights for the citizens. Bad cops would have their insurance pay for the liability they are found for. Their insurance premiums would increase to account for their bad behavior. Bad cops would eventually not be able to afford the sky high rates from their bad behavior and not be employable as cops anymore.
I'm even fine if a city would pay for the base insurance, but any premium increases from judgments of bad behavior would be born by the officer that caused it. This way good cops aren't burdened by the actions of the bad ones.
That's not a horrible idea, but it could also be turned into "as long as you can pay your insurance premium, you have license to abuse power." Which is kind of what it already is - the city will pay the settlement, using tax dollars to do it.
Abuse of police power should carry prison time.
My thing is insurance is based on actuarial tables and so cops should effect the rates of other cops. It would be a powerful self policing incentive.
The challenge there would be you'd be uniting both bad cops and good cops against implementing professional insurance initially. This would also be a challenged to adoption if the city is paying the base premiums initially. Those base premiums would be likely high right out of the gate. It would be a great talking point good/bad cops would use against this idea to taxpayers "look at how much this is costing you to pay this high insurance base. We should get rid of it entirely" the cops would say.
oh im sure cops would be against it but I bet it would do stellar in a voter referendum.
oh im sure cops would be against it but I bet it would do stellar in a voter referendum.
Have you seen our voters lately?
Why not get good cops on your side in getting this in place first and let the actuarial tables be built from those experiences that reflect the system in place?
Mainly because good cops won't likely go for it. This is something that definately needs to be done top down at the government level.
I agree it will be from the top down government level, but why do you think good cops won't like it?
for the same reason any other person would not want to carry insurance if they did not have to. It will cost them money.
I think you missed the part of my post where I communicated the city/department would pay the base premium for the officers. So good cops would pay nothing. Only bad cops that got higher rates from judgments against them would have to fork out the overage in premiums to continue practicing law enforcement.
“as long as you can pay your insurance premium, you have license to abuse power.” Which is kind of what it already is - the city will pay the settlement, using tax dollars to do it.
Excactly, except this introduces the "as long as you can pay". With bad cops continuing to get judgments their premiums will keep increasing. At some point the "as long as you can pay" kicks in, because they can't afford to pay the insurance anymore, and they're out as cops. The great part about this is that this is in complete control of the individual cop. If they're good cops, they won't get judgments against them, their rates won't rise. They stay employed as cops.
There could be an unexpected consequence of shifting the financial burden from "the department" to each individual officer. When you're paying for your insurance, you might feel more entitled to "use it." Brains don't always make logical judgments.
I'm totally fine with that because its bad cop behavior. If a bad cop plans to "use" his insurance, they'll quickly learn that the consequences are higher premiums coming directly out of the bad cop's pocket. If they don't learn the first time and keep "using" the insurance, in short order they won't be able to afford their insurance and they will no longer be cops.
Good thing I got this insurance, I can shoot, beat, and illegally detain people with impunity and no repercussions.....oh oh wait
The bad officers probably
Yeah its like im paying for insurance on this car. If I don't crash it once in awhile im just being a sucker. I need to throw rocks at my own house. No one gets incentivized to raise their insurance rates. I mean I get dumb but this is one thing even the lizard brain gets.
That’s not a horrible idea, but it could also be turned into “as long as you can pay your insurance premium, you have license to abuse power.”
I don't think that carries a lot of weight considering we haven't heard of that situation with medical professionals.
I'm not sure it would work. As a licensed professional, the insurance coverage for my work is carried by my company. If I become that much of a risk, my company would fire me.
There is no way that a police union would allow their members to be fired due to insurance premiums.