Once again the taxpayers pay the price instead of the officers actually responsible. This is a broken system. Make the individual officer carry some kind of malpractice insurance in order to work.
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
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The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
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And who pays the officer's salary so they can afford to pay the malpractice insurance?
The officer works for the state government, so his/her salary is paid by the state government. I'm not suggesting we change that. But, each officer should have to pay for his or her own malpractice insurance out of pocket. After enough risky behavior, the officer's insurance would be unaffordable, making them unable to retain/find work as a police officer. This would chance the practice of taxpayers having to fork out multimillion dollar payments to victims of crimes committed by officers. Instead, insurance companies would be making those payments.
Of course the city is settling rather than throwing those pieces of shit under the bus.
Both Hood and Washington accused former Detectives Kenneth Boudreau and John Halloran of fabricating evidence and coercing witnesses in an effort to solve the high-profile killing. Boudreau and Halloran have faced dozens of lawsuits and complaints alleging they physically abused those they suspected of committing crimes. In every instance, they have denied those allegations.
... Cases that involved at least one officer with repeated claims of misconduct accounted for 47% of the cost borne by taxpayers to resolve police misconduct cases between 2019 and 2021, according to the analysis.
In 2017, Chicago taxpayers paid $30 million to resolve four cases brought by four men who were convicted based on evidence gathered by Boudreau and spent a combined 64 years in prison for crimes they did not commit, Felter told the City Council’s Finance Committee.
In all, five wrongful conviction cases naming Boudreau have been settled by the city, and another 10 wrongful conviction cases naming the now-retired officer are pending, Felter said.
Not one word nor even a hint of punishment for former Detectives Kenneth Boudreau and John Halloran.
Thats what I mean, the city simply settled than letting those guys face any consequence.
Yup. They're probably drinking beer and laughing as they hear about themselves in the news.
Shouldn’t it be a million a year?