When it comes to police officers having to carry insurance, Dr. Rashawn Ray notes that settlements paid by civil authorities often hurt historically disadvantaged communities:
Because Chicago budgeted only about $20 million for police misconduct settlements, it used what are informally called “police brutality bonds” to cover its $225 million in settlements. Unlike other bonds, police brutality bonds often do not affect a city’s credit rating. And again, this money does not include the lawyer fees, which cost the city $13 million in 2015 alone. In addition to aiming to implement changes related to police training, deescalation, and the use of force, then-Mayor Rahm Emmanuel proposed increasing appropriation funds to cover police misconduct settlements.
Even more egregious are the financial implications of the funding for bond fees, appropriated funding, and civilian payouts for police misconduct more broadly. In a 2018 report, the Action Center on Race & the Economy described police brutality bonds as “financial instruments that transfer resources and extract wealth from Black and poor communities to Wall St., through the fees banks charge cities for the bonds.” Moreover, funding that should go toward education, work infrastructure, and health care is fueling police brutality of those same disenfranchised people in underserved neighborhoods, as is the case from Inkster, Michigan, to Gage County, Nebraska. [Lawfare]
A requirement that police officers carry brutality insurance would reverse the flow of money, resulting in Wall St. paying the families of those abused by the police. Wall St. won’t like that, and so we might see reformation come not from riots – but from people with a lot of money to lose or win.
There is also a second model:
Under the police department insurance model, the premium is paid by the municipality. To increase accountability, the premium should come from the police department budget. Departments with more misconduct settlements should not simply be given higher yearly budgets to cover higher premiums. Instead, the premium costs should be taken into account when departments ask for budget increases.
I do not think this is as potentially effective.
