Comment by hollywood_court

> But when a police officer raids the wrong home, injures or kills innocent people, or throws tear gas into a room with a baby, there’s rarely accountability—legal, financial, or professional. That’s unacceptable in any system that claims to serve and protect the public.

The American public, or at least the set of them whose vote counts among the gerrymandering, have explicitly chosen this. Their representatives are now building an even less accountable system to be used against "immigrants", i.e. anyone non-white, who can be abducted and denied legal representation.

That’s a dangerous slippery slope. Most public officers (employees) are subject to a wide range of ethics and other regulations that impact post-service employment. In exchange, you’re indemnified for official acts and the government has a duty to defend you.

I’ve served in policy making roles at different levels of government. There’s a variety of businesses post employment that I’m not permitted to enter in post employment, some for 2-5 years, some indefinitely. Those restrictions are taken seriously, and I know that I’ll be held accountable.

Putting the onus on the employee is really enabling bad behavior - the issue is the poor governance of the police, and using the courts as some sort of cudgel won’t fix it, it will just create more corruption as the powers that be will hang out patsies to take the fall.

If the police are allowed to operate paramilitary forces, they need paramilitary discipline and rules of engagement. Army soldiers breaking rules of engagement get punished and officers sidelined and pushed out of the service. Police in many cases have been allowed to create cultures where everyone scratches each others back. Many police are veterans, and many privately will comment on the differences between those experiences.

IMO, the way to address the issues you describe is standard separation of duties. Invest in state and regional police forces, disempower local police, and move enforcement and investigation of police to a chain of command removed from the police. (Perhaps a State AG) When you need to blunt the variance associated with people’s poor application of discretion, the answer is usually a bureaucratic process.

> I’ve long believed that police officers should be required to carry private liability insurance, just like professionals in many other high risk fields. If an officer is uninsurable, they should be unhireable, plain and simple. Repeated misconduct would drive up their premiums or disqualify them entirely, creating a real consequence for bad behavior.

And it'd be administered by some faceless bureaucracy full of accountants, rather than a couple local politicians that the union can just bully (or bribe or whatever) into ignoring things.

But of course the current mess derives from sovereign immunity, which might be a bit tricky to get the politicians to tinker with more than they already have. :(

>Law enforcement needs greater accountability altogether.

Which is directly contrary to what's good for the state. So unless the lack of accountability is more threatening to the state than less useful to the state law enforcement is the lack of accountability will remain. At best it might get slightly better over decades.

> But when a police officer raids the wrong home, injures or kills innocent people, or throws tear gas into a room with a baby, there’s rarely accountability—legal, financial, or professional.

It's not just that there's rarely accountability - there's explicitly no accountability.

People have sued officers, police departments, cities for the cost of damages from such mistaken raids (including ones that were completely negligent, like wrong street entirely) and the courts have explicitly ruled that they have zero reponsibility to pay for any of the damage caused.

Chesterton’s fence cones to mind. I wonder what unintended positive effects the current policy has.

Politically, you could probably sell the insurance idea as actually protecting officers. But then you'd get the wrong people opposing it...