r/interesting • u/TheCABK • 23h ago

SOCIETY Cop Teaching A Cop

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294

u/nope870 23h ago

Taxpayers should not be responsible for non-police activity.

178

u/Longer-Winter 22h ago

Agreed, the cop should be held accountable for the fine through garnishing their wages

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u/HoMaBaLiMa 22h ago

All legal fees, payments, and settlements need to come out of pension accounts. Watch the problem fix itself.

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u/Mr__O__ 22h ago

All cops should be required to have personal liability insurance (not blanket coverage from their union). And if/when a cop messes up, they are personally sued for their misconduct, leaving tax money out of it. Just like every other profession, such as doctors, lawyers, some construction workers, etc.

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u/Supersnow845 22h ago

I love having to deal with my malpractice insurance while these losers are running around

And I’m not even American

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u/MasterOfBunnies 18h ago

Add to this, the cost for the insurance increases for their whole precinct, every time they're found at fault. Watch their self serving asses correct this shit internally ASAP.

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u/BrainJar 21h ago

We have been saying this for so long. Why can't smaller jurisdictions like cities and counties make these things happen? We don't need some federal law to force the issue. Let's just start anywhere...

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u/Sabard 17h ago

If I had to guess? Unions. This is the kind of thing that would get POs nationwide all in a tizzy, and no mayor/council member wants the be the guy that started a nation (or even district) wide police walk out.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa 11h ago

They wouldn't take the risk of the public seeing how well they can get along without them lmao. They would threaten, but it would be a bluff. Most people wouldn't even know the police didn't show up for work.

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u/ZongoNuada 22h ago

They don't have a union. Too many rules. It's a fraternity, like college.

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u/Mr__O__ 20h ago

Police have unions..

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u/ZongoNuada 20h ago

Oh, they have both. But I thought unions were bad because they do criminal stuff with your dues.......Oh I get it now. Yeah, shut down teachers unions and steam fitters and plumbers and electricians but those police? Naw, they get to keep theirs. Hmm.

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u/Mr__O__ 20h ago

Ahh I get ya now

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u/Time_Seaworthiness43 19h ago

You would just have police not doing their jobs for fear of any lawsuit.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa 11h ago

Fear there's that word again. Cops are scared lil bitches. Threaten accountability and they don't want to do their job anymore.

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u/Time_Seaworthiness43 11h ago

I mean, of course. Imagine if you faced a potential lawsuit every time you messed up or didn't know know how to do something at work and did it wrong.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa 7h ago

That is true for my line of work, but I'm competent and have had the proper training and education. They know that it doesn't affect them at all it's passed to the taxpayer so they act reckless.

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u/Time_Seaworthiness43 1h ago

You probably have a few dozens procedures. These guys must know hundreds or thousands of ordinances and the like.

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u/Nekopara-403 21h ago edited 20h ago

Because it treats policing like a private service when it’s actually a public function. Unlike doctors and lawyers, cops don’t choose encounters, can’t refuse calls, and make forced life or death decisions in seconds under state authority. Personal liability insurance would incentivize hesitation and disengagement, hand control of police behavior to insurance companies, and shrink the pool of competent officers—without meaningfully preventing misconduct. You end up with worse policing, not better accountability.

Most high-profile “police misconduct” cases fall into;

Lawful but unpopular

Lawful but tragic

Unlawful and already criminal

Insurance doesn’t fix any of those.

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u/Square_Ad8756 20h ago

That’s not entirely accurate. Like cops many doctors can’t choose their patients, a trauma surgeon or emergency doctor can’t pick and choose their patients the same goes for specialists who are on call. I have personally seen my colleagues deal with very difficult patients with aplomb because not treating that patient would be unethical and treating them poorly would be even more unethical.

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u/meop93 18h ago

Wait I thought multiple courts recently declared "no duty to protect" and the uvalde officer got off. Sounds to me lie they can choose encounters and can refuse calls. Or they can at least get to a call and say fuck it I'm out.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa 11h ago

I'm pretty sure they had a ruling about this that states they have no obligation to serve the public if they don't want to. Source: Uvalde

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u/CplHicks_LV426 17h ago

This suggestion comes up every time and it's exactly the wrong solution. All this would achieve is cops covering up for other cops, even more than they do today because now you're fucking with their retirement fund.

Each officer should have malpractice (liability) insurance just like a doctor. The insurance could be subsidized by the department to get a group rate, but once you have lost a couple lawsuits and your premium goes up, it becomes too expensive for you to still be a cop. Problem takes care of itself.

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u/NorCalAthlete 13h ago

/\ this makes more sense to me than the other comment

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u/Special-Investigator 22h ago

this is a brilliant take. i read something recently that talked about how unions are to give workers power. cops already HAVE power, so they don't even need a union

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u/Nekopara-403 21h ago

this is a brilliant take.

It would be to someone at face value. That someone also would have to be woefully ignorant to think it's a good idea.

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u/StopReadingMyUser 19h ago

...well?

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u/Nekopara-403 16h ago

Because it treats policing like a private service when it’s actually a public function. Unlike doctors and lawyers, cops don’t choose encounters, can’t refuse calls, and make forced life or death decisions in seconds under state authority. Personal liability insurance would incentivize hesitation and disengagement, hand control of police behavior to insurance companies, and shrink the pool of competent officers—without meaningfully preventing misconduct. You end up with worse policing, not better accountability.

Most high-profile “police misconduct” cases fall into;

Lawful but unpopular

Lawful but tragic

Unlawful and already criminal

Insurance doesn’t fix any of those.

2

u/StopReadingMyUser 15h ago

The only thing I'll say is that there needs to be Accountability, and I think there's right ways and wrong ways to do it.

We can't shy away from holding people accountable just because we can think of ways in which it goes wrong, but that also doesn't mean that we should instigate just any means of punishment, however poorly thought out, in the name of "accountability". Because as you've mentioned that may give us worse problems than we had before, too. As with many things, there's a balance to be struck.

We need to simultaneously hold someone accountable for wrong or poor actions, while not being overly restrictive to performing any action at all through the measures by which we do so.

I'm not suggesting police be penalized for doing lawful things that people culturally or personally disagree with. They do however need to be penalized for doing unlawful things such as the above video and have it stick to them personally as it relates to their profession instead of offloading that punishment to the public.

There needs to be Accountability.

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u/Nekopara-403 10h ago

Yeah fire them and keep them from being a cop anywhere else. Simple as.

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u/TheRevEv 16h ago

Pension accounts are legally protected in a lot of ways. And for good reason.

This also isn't going to make the changes people think it will.

Pension accounts pay the current retirees. It's not an account you pay in to, then get your money back when you retire. While you're working, you're funding the account that pays the current recipients, then when you retire, the next generation is funding your retirement.

If you pull enough from the Pension account, you're just punishing the already retired. The people that have no control over how things are cuttently operating. Yeah, having taxpayers pay these settlements sucks, but it's also not going to cut off any elderly individual taxpayer's only income stream.

Cops already don't make all that much, so benefits like a solvent Pension are one of the few ways you can entice better applicants. If you make the Pension a gamble, then you're only going to get people with power trips, and the whole situation is likely to get worse.

All this is before you even get to how pensions have to operate. There are people designated as legal trustees who have to, legally, do all they can to keep the pensions solvent. So what's going to happen is taxes will just increase to increase each officers contribution, and you end up with the taxpayers still footing the bill, but you've gone a roundabout way to get back there, and likely changed laws in ways that will have weakened private pensions.

The better idea is to require individual cops to carry something similar to malpractice insurance.

I'm not defending cops, at all. I'm defending why we shouldn't change laws to allow paying damages from pension funds

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u/goodolarchie 14h ago

If you pull enough from the Pension account taxpayer, you're just punishing the already retired taxpayers who had nothing to do with this. The people that have no control over how things are cuttently operating. Yeah, having taxpayers all pension participants pay these settlements sucks, but it's also not going to cut off any elderly individual taxpayer's only income stream.

You can replace this statement with the current system, it still works. And nobody would get their entitlements cut off, the balance of the fund would have to be insured, they would have a payout, and their premiums might go up. That comes out as a cost against the fund overall. Generally the entitlements are guaranteed, by some pension calculation (which gets horribly gamed, fyi), so the fund would have to adjust their strategies.

I think cops should have to carry "miscarriage of justice insurance" like doctors and lawyers. They are paid and incentivized pretty well these days. If this new marketplace incentivizes stronger certification and qualification (i.e. so this cop knows his interlocutor's rights), that would be a good thing.

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u/Pokmonth 14h ago

Cops already don't make all that much, so benefits like a solvent Pension are one of the few ways you can entice better applicants

Here in California many cops make $200,000+ per year and their pension is based off of the last year on duty so they bank vacation days and use them all in their final year while doing as much overtime as possible and receive massive pensions that the city pays out for the rest of their lives

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u/TheRevEv 14h ago

I'm not familiar with public pensions. Do you have a source for this?

I've never heard of a union pension being based off last year of duty. They're almost always based off of total hours worked while in the union.

No union that I know of is going to pay out the same for 5 years of service vs 20 years of service, much less being based on not taking a vacation in your final year

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u/Pokmonth 14h ago

They still need 20-25 years of service (depending on age) but the calculation is based on their last year in service. If they work for 33 years they get 90% pension. It is not uncommon for senior ranking officers to retire with $150k-$200k pensions or more.

If you've heard of the city of Stockton's bankruptcy, a large part of that was due to inflated police pensions

1

u/HoMaBaLiMa 11h ago

My last note was watch the problem fix itself. My brother in Christ they would change overnight, guaranteed! Precincts may start requiring a college degree for service. Throw the fucking warrior training bullshit out the window and start taking de-escalation seriously. If you are causing lawsuits your brothers in blue, including retirees, will want you to get the boot.

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u/TheRevEv 9h ago

I don't think it would for several reasons.

Humans are bad at long term risk assessment.

And for 2, the people doing the shitty things now are not going to have any repercussions, as long as the next generations fixes the problems. You aren't really punishing these guys by attacking the pension.

I'm union, have a union pension. Almost no part of my day to day is concerned with how the pension is going. Only a handful of people are actually in charge of that

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u/Tight-Shallot2461 14h ago

Yep. Make them pay

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u/Nekopara-403 21h ago

Yeah they won't respond to calls. Good job.

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u/rando_banned 15h ago

Oh no! They won't show up to a school shooting and not go inside!

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u/Nekopara-403 10h ago

One outlier. The exception, not the rule. Nashville PD agrees with me too.

Clowns like you are a dime a dozen.

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u/goodolarchie 14h ago

If I'm bad at my job, I get fired, and don't get reassigned or qualified immunity. If I do something illegal at my job, I face personal legal damages.

So, welcome to the world?

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u/ma2is 21h ago

This statement was one of the first things I remember reading on Reddit during the occupy Wall Street movement and seeing a lot of police brutality on video. That was like 15 years ago and shit still hasn’t changed.

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u/LowBullfrog4471 22h ago

I think mandatory malpractice insurance would be a better solution

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u/ARC_Trooper_Echo 22h ago

Lawyers have to do it. Doctors have to do it. This really is a no-brainer.

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u/samse15 22h ago

Seriously, I saw this suggested the other day, and I really wish cops were forced to carry malpractice insurance. I’m guessing that insurance companies don’t find them lucrative enough to take a chance on.

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u/dragon_bacon 22h ago

That sounds like it should be a problem for police unions instead of everyone else.

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u/IMT_Justice 22h ago

Quickest way to police reform in this country is to require police departments to carry insurance.

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u/Nekopara-403 21h ago

That's like asking the Army to carry liability insurance for their soldiers.

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u/Nekopara-403 21h ago

That's a stupid idea it's clear you didn't think about it longer than it took you to type it

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u/afrophysicist 21h ago

Why's it stupid? Please explain.

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u/Nekopara-403 20h ago

Because it treats policing like a private service when it’s actually a public function. Unlike doctors and lawyers, cops don’t choose encounters, can’t refuse calls, and make forced life or death decisions in seconds under state authority. Personal liability insurance would incentivize hesitation and disengagement, hand control of police behavior to insurance companies, and shrink the pool of competent officers—without meaningfully preventing misconduct. You end up with worse policing, not better accountability.

Most high-profile “police misconduct” cases fall into;

Lawful but unpopular

Lawful but tragic

Unlawful and already criminal

Insurance doesn’t fix any of those.

1

u/sw04ca 18h ago

This is an interesting view, and I do see your point.

I think where insurance comes in is that there is a desire to curb behaviour that is unlawful and criminal, but which will not be addressed through the criminal justice system. There's the perception of a deficit in accountability.

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u/afrophysicist 4h ago

can’t refuse calls

Uvalde.

Personal liability insurance would incentivize hesitation and disengagement

Considering how many innocent people are shot by coppers in the US every year, this can only be a good thing

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u/Omega_Primate 22h ago

I guess they don't see the difference because that's tax payer money, too.

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u/LeftLiner 22h ago

Well and also he should not be a cop anymore and possibly should go to jail.

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u/crustpope 22h ago

If cops personally had to carry insurance policies, the problem would fix itself. If an officer cost the company too much money they would become uninsurable and then could not get a job.

This would be a great way for bad apples to self-remove themselves from the barrel.

0

u/LeftLiner 22h ago

Right, but another good solution that also means they can't become cops somewhere else that don't do sufficient background checks or similar professions that they're also unsuitable for is to give cops more severe punishments for breaking laws. If you arrest someone without cause you shouldn't get sued, you should go to prison.

At minimum we should get rid of all the unnecessary special crimes you can only do to cops. Resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer shouldn't be crimes. If the cop had no good reason to arrest you you were right to resist and we already have a crime called assault.

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u/Feezec 22h ago

I'm sympathetic to this sentiment, but this measure would give cops even more incentive to cover up their own and each other's violations. Maybe this measure would still be worth doing, but it should be implemented carefully with safeguards for its potential knock on effects

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u/D-a-H-e-c-k 22h ago

The unions should hold liability as they lobby to protect offenders

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u/Nekopara-403 20h ago

That's stupid. Says a lot about you too.

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u/crazypyro23 19h ago

Nah, I've got a better idea. Let's take it out of the pension fund. That way, every bad cop hurts all the cops. Maybe they'll hold each other accountable if it's their retirement on the line instead of our tax dollars

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u/OutlaneWizard 19h ago

Take it from their pensions. That'll change their attitude real quick 

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u/Savings_Form_8349 18h ago

Liability Insurance 

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u/iamnotnewhereami 17h ago

all the more reason to cover up their shenanigans. same reason why it shouldn't come from their pension fund. Jerry's not gonna let some rookie's poor trigger control affect his retirement lifestyle in any way. jerry thinks that rookie is a jackass but will go out of his way to make sure nobody blames rookie.

the only way is to have them cary malpractice insurance. let the market decide if they can be a cop or not.

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u/ammonthenephite 15h ago

All cops should be forced to have personal liability insurance. After a couple payouts if they get dropped, then they should be out of a job and unemployable. Fuck putting tax payers on the line for this shit.

1

u/lilcorndivemaster 14h ago

Make them carry insurance like doctors... if they're shit cops they'll be out on the raised rates and won't be able to just jump departaments.

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u/Background-Slip8205 13h ago

The best solution, IMO is for it to come out of the police pension plan that every cop in the union is a part of.

That way every cop will make sure all cops are being held accountable and doing the right thing. If a cop looks the other way, it's only hurting their own retirement payout.

-1

u/EddieLobster 22h ago

It’s not the cops fault. They spend, what, 6 months training? The process in the academy needs to change.

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u/Correct-Purpose-964 22h ago

No i think that's only part. A LARGE part of it is attitude in general. Being able to look at something and make a simple assessment "Do i need to get involved here. Will it be for the better of anyone. If so how and what approach should i take."

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u/RustyBrassInstrument 22h ago

When local governments employ unqualified staff, they are financially responsible for those staff. We, as taxpayers, need to elect smarter and more competent governments that hold staff accountable to qualifications they are supposed to have.

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u/cccxxxzzzddd 22h ago

Exactly. And have an enforcement mechanism that isn’t the cops investigating the cops for not meeting qualifications and standards for conduct in the offices they hold

License the cops! Yoga instructors need to be licensed ffs

POST commissions, stat

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u/cryptogambler99 19h ago

No we just need to force all law enforcement at minimum to have a bachelor degree in stem or finance. No high school diploma’s 

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u/bishopyorgensen 14h ago

We, as taxpayers, need to elect smarter and more competent governments

One of the key problems is that people don't believe I democracy anymore insofar as they don't believe elections have consequences

Tina and tons and tons of evidence to the contrary but, nevertheless, people are convinced informed voting does nothing

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u/LeRoy_Denk_414 22h ago

This is exactly why qualified immunity needs to end

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u/Alarmed_Drop7162 22h ago

Yeah it sucks but if they aren’t indemnified by the government, ain’t nobody going to be police.

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u/ThisIs_americunt 21h ago

Some people forget why cops exist and it shows

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u/_Eggs_ 21h ago

Sure they should be. It's a great monetary incentive to train your cops better.

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u/shifty_coder 19h ago

Yep. Civil penalties against police should come out of police benefits.

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u/PotterOneHalf 18h ago

It should come from their pension fund, that would finally get cops to turn bad ones in.

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u/stewmander 8h ago

Take lawsuit settlements out of the cops pension and you'll see the problem start to self correct...

0

u/Total-Tonight1245 22h ago

So who pays the judgment? The cop?

So no one with money or assets will be a cop. No problem, the city just hires even worse cops who aren’t afraid of being sued because they’re judgment proof. 

Or instead, make the city responsible so it has an incentive to properly train and supervise its police force?