Instances of police officer killings are not going to go away. But there are simple steps that we can implement immediately to help remove the very worst in the police force.
Here is the problem. When a police officer kills someone who was doing nothing wrong, we as citizens lose no matter what the results are. If they are acquitted, we don’t get justice and a murderer walks free. If they are found guilty, then the police department (or city or state) usually has to pay out a settlement. That means the citizens are footing the bill to compensate for this officer’s crime.
There is a very simple, free-market solution to this problem: personal liability insurance. I know of no better institution for assessing risk than insurance companies. They are impartial third parties, skilled at balancing risks. An insurance company would look at all actions of a police officer they are insuring. If the officer has multiple instances of using excessive force, they start to become more of a liability and their premiums go up. Just like when you get speeding tickets or cause an accident, your premiums go up because you have displayed tendencies that indicate you are more of a risky driver. Insurance companies can weed out the cops who have displayed repeated risky behavior, but because of manning issues or internal politics, they are kept on the force.
Insurance companies are not going to want to pay out $20 million for a wrongful death case. They are going to work hard to limit their risks. At some point, a police officer becomes such a liability that they are uninsurable. This would be a far better way of weeding out bad cops than anything the government could ever do.
If a doctor has so many malpractice suits against him that he becomes uninsurable, he’ll lose his medical license. This doctor would be guilty of being bad a saving lives. If a doctor is so bad at his job of saving lives that he can’t be insured and loses his job, why wouldn’t we hold police officers to a similar standard when they have the ability to take life?
The answer to that question is pretty simple. Police forces already have a manning issue. They are scraping the bottom of the barrel to get their numbers up. This is not to say that all cops are terrible. But we have all worked at jobs were idiots worked just because they need the bodies to get the job done.
Police officers should have to have a personal, financial stake in the outcome of their decisions. This should be the standard even for instances far less severe than murder. Hot heads might be more likely to take a step back and deescalate the situation. Officers would likely receive discounts for taking classes on deescalation or conflict resolution.
The police do not have a constitutional duty to protect us (Castle Rock v. Gonzales). Yet we are told that our taxes go, partially, go for this “service”. And when the police not only fail to protect us, but are the cause of our death, we are taxed again when the government is forced to pay a settlement. It doesn’t have to be this way. We need to demand that our public servants are held accountable for their actions. If we expect this for doctors, then we surely should expect it for our police forces.