> It's going to be hard to tie financial responsibility to individual officers in a way that doesn't ultimately come back to tax dollars anyway.
Why not just deduct all lawsuits and other costs from the collective pension fund for police departments? This seems like a trivial problem to solve (I mean assuming the goal were to solve it, and not increase police power while minimizing accountability). Once the police have to start paying for their own fuckups, I think they will quickly turn on each other. And in the event they decide to double down and hide it collectively, they risk losing the pension fund for the entire police department (obviously depends on the court settlement). At least they'll have skin in the game for their corruption.
So good cops who have never done anything wrong and never looked the other way or covered up for their coworkers would lose their pension?
Communal punishment is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. While those clearly do not apply in the situation you propose, it may be an interesting datapoint for considering its fairness.
> So good cops who have never done anything wrong and never looked the other way or covered up for their coworkers would lose their pension?
Absolutely, and that's a great change. Currently, 'good' cops are incentivised to cover up for their bad brethren due to institutional pressures (see: 'good' cops getting bullied out of the force). If instead the culture incentivised speaking out against bad actors because suddenly it affected the majority, maybe we'd see the necessary change.
My work bonus depends 50% on the company's performance and 50% on my own personal performance, and the company performance is measured partially by our safety figures. When other people in the company injure themselves, my bonus drops because the company safety performance drops. I'm incentivised to improve the safety culture in general and enable others to be safe, rather than just my own personal performance.
It's an entirely acceptable approach, because you're supposed to be part of a team. I don't see a difference with the pension example.
> So good cops who have never done anything wrong and never looked the other way or covered up for their coworkers would lose their pension?
100%, not even a second thought. We need reform, not excuses. Why do cops even get a pension in the first place? It should be a reward, not an entitlement. And it should only be rewarded if the entire department does its job, not an individual officer. They serve the community, and if the community is not served they should not be set for life.
To be clear here, the bar is "don't break the law." This isn't some extraordinary standard we're expecting them to adhere to. In fact, we're only trying to hold them to the same standards they hold everybody else to.
> In fact, we're only trying to hold them to the same standards they hold everybody else to.
Then convict them. You can't? Fix that. Why this convoluted scheme that punishes unrelated people? You say you want the same standards to apply to the police but on the other hand you accept that they can never be punished directly and their colleages must be fined instead. That's crazy inconsistent, those are not at all the standards that normal people are held to.
So this whole "we should hold them to the same standards" thing is a sham. You've given up, oh no, it's just too hard. We'll claim to hold them to the same standards because it has a nice ring to it, and then do something else entirely.
I think you have no idea what you're talking about, and are simply regurgitating "your solution isn't perfect therefore it's horrible."
Please take some effort to understand what the problem is, because it's painfully obvious to me you do not. If I had to guess, you're not even from the United States. I say that solely based on how completely disconnected from this problem you appear to be.
Why not just deduct all lawsuits and other costs from the collective pension fund for police departments? This seems like a trivial problem to solve (I mean assuming the goal were to solve it, and not increase police power while minimizing accountability). Once the police have to start paying for their own fuckups, I think they will quickly turn on each other. And in the event they decide to double down and hide it collectively, they risk losing the pension fund for the entire police department (obviously depends on the court settlement). At least they'll have skin in the game for their corruption.