Should police be required to have liability insurance?

[TheButterZone]

Police chiefs are not elected officials, they are hired by mayors, city councils & city managers. Sheriffs are elected officials, but their replacement can be appointed/anointed by a retiring sheriff, whether or not their retirement date coincides with an election or not. The incumbent is rarely unseated without term limits.

[BADecker]

Every time I watch the news I see some lunatics from the U.S. congress demanding war, violence and destruction. This after nutjobs that somebody voted for have ruined country after country around the world in endless war scams. And on the news I see on a regular basis nutcase police hired and supervised by some nutjobs that somebody voted into office. This is what I see, the retards that vote for all this psychojunk and the violence it brings see it quite differently I´m sure.

And when you fight their demands, then they do something like this... from http://www.inquisitr.com/2021165/jade-helm-walmart-conspiracy-biggest-plumbing-job-in-history-or-something-far-more-sinister/:

Walmart closures in Texas, California, Florida, and Oklahoma have sparked mounting concerns over Operation Jade Helm. Five Walmart stores will close abruptly for the next six months. Shocked Walmart workers who have found themselves suddenly out of a job were told that “plumbing problems” are the cause of the immediate closures.

Employees impacted by the Walmart closures were given just a few hours notice about the six-month shutdown. Approximately 2,200 employees will now be without a paycheck during the “extended repairs.”

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Operation Jade Helm involves 1,200 special forces team members being dropped into seven southwestern states as a part of realistic military training exercises. The domestic special ops training has become highly controversial. The special ops soldiers, some of the most elite fighting men in the world, will be ordered to “operate undetected” among the American civilian population

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/2021165/jade-helm-walmart-conspiracy-biggest-plumbing-job-in-history-or-something-far-more-sinister/#dhQKfUJiQVSJZTBD.99.

Google "walmart jade helm."

Read more and see pictures at http://www.inquisitr.com/2021165/jade-helm-walmart-conspiracy-biggest-plumbing-job-in-history-or-something-far-more-sinister/



EDIT: More pictures at http://allnewspipeline.com/What_Martial_Law_Will_Look_Like.php.

[notlist3d]

Police chiefs are not elected officials, they are hired by mayors, city councils & city managers. Sheriffs are elected officials, but their replacement can be appointed/anointed by a retiring sheriff, whether or not their retirement date coincides with an election or not. The incumbent is rarely unseated without term limits.

All you are right.   I put wrong one in.    Yes Sheriff is elected.   Been a while since really voting on that one here.  I know where I live it pretty much ends up same person each vote.

[jaysabi]

Even if each individual officer is legally required to sign up for liability insurance personally*, the government will always find a way to reimburse them for that expense with taxpayer dollars, no matter what any law says.

Obviously, if you're enacting a law to require cops to foot the bill for their own insurance risks, the intent is to take the liability off of taxpayers, so I don't buy your conclusion.

The cops won't quietly acquiesce to this new law, which effectively reduces their salary. They would obviously expect a pay revision to incorporate this new "cost". Most probably, a group insurance plan, would make sense economically. In the end, the taxpayers would foot the bill.

Obviously cops don't do anything voluntarily, which is why the point is it's not voluntary. They fight civilian oversight, they fight accountability, they fight pension reform, they fight body cameras; I would expect them to continue to fight anything, including something that would make them economically responsible for their actions. But there's no reason to think that these changes which would be forced on them would be borne by taxpayers who are forcing them to accept the changes through a change in the law.

[jaysabi]

Dude that wouldn't work, humans inevitably make mistakes. And you can't compare police officers to doctors. Doctors' work is orderly, there is method and every case has a very clear path to a resolution, if procedures are not respected or the doctor is negligent then he should definitely pay for it. There is no order as such in police work, they have to prepare for the unexpected. There are just too many factors involved, especially when lives are being threatened to be able to say with certainty that the cop is to blame.

And yet courts award settlements all the time based on police officers' bad actions. Those are the instances this is referring to, not instances where cops act justifiably in a violent situation. The situations where they shoot an unarmed civilian, or abuse a suspect, or doctor evidence, or any other instance in which governments have paid out settlements for the bad actions of cops.

[ObscureBean]

Dude that wouldn't work, humans inevitably make mistakes. And you can't compare police officers to doctors. Doctors' work is orderly, there is method and every case has a very clear path to a resolution, if procedures are not respected or the doctor is negligent then he should definitely pay for it. There is no order as such in police work, they have to prepare for the unexpected. There are just too many factors involved, especially when lives are being threatened to be able to say with certainty that the cop is to blame.

And yet courts award settlements all the time based on police officers' bad actions. Those are the instances this is referring to, not instances where cops act justifiably in a violent situation. The situations where they shoot an unarmed civilian, or abuse a suspect, or doctor evidence, or any other instance in which governments have paid out settlements for the bad actions of cops.

Yes but courts are far from perfect, that they award settlements does not necessarily mean they are right in doing it. What I'm saying is that unless you can map out the law enforcer's psyche in its entirety (which would then mean he/she has absolutely no reason to behave in any other way than the recommended/prescribed way), it is impossible to grasp the subtleties of a situation where lives are at stake because reflexes and instinct (which override protocol) usually kick in at some point.

[umaOuma]

This is Fantastic!!! Ofcourse there should be liability insurance for cops so that they can perform their duty more responsibly without causing any damage to civilians. If this insurance is applicable then they perform their duties sensibly and will not take law for granted.

[freemind1]

If state officials who carry weapons (in this case police) have to pay for insurance every time they use their weapons (whether rightly or wrongly, that it would decide a judge) i'm sure those weapons would be used much less.

[hunnaryb]

there must be liability insurance for the police then only they will stop harassing civilians and as they dont target the criminals they just harasse normal personal who is not at all involved in criminal activities and who is going to pay for their life losses?? So there should be a liability insurance for police.

[leopard2]

There are plenty of posts in this forum about police shootings and police brutality, and invariably, a comment about how bad cops murder a citizen, then the tax payers are on the hook for their defense and an eventual settlement. With this in mind, should police be required to carry an insurance policy to cover payouts and lawsuits related to their behavior while on the job? Doctor's are required to carry malpractice insurance, why not cops? Protect the tax payers from bad cops.

Because a doctor usually tries to help people and only if something goes wrong, this is called malpractice

Now the pigs usually try to get people in trouble, (either by locking them up, stealing their money or injuring or killing them), and it is an absolute exception that they actually help someone. They are the opposite of doctors. No insurance in the world would cover that.

Also no insurance would insure a person who is willing to accept money for getting others in trouble. A person who is ready to hurt someone else just because the "law" allows it, might also hurt someone else if the law is not looking.

I do realize that some people deserve the trouble the cops get them into, but 90% or more of cop activity is about victimless crimes,  where no one is "violated" except a rule

[galdur]

Perhaps if cops get full military training they will learn what soldiers do so well, i.e. kill each other through "friendly" fire. But maybe that will happen more when they get into more serious skirmishes/battles with the citizenry which seems inevitable. Good luck, g