Jury awards $22m to man locked in closet by police for four days
cleveland.com
cleveland.com
Thoughts?
Sounds good at first blush.
http://www.americanbar.org/portals/solo_lawyers/going_solo/m...
You're speaking of private insurance, then. If you were an insurer, would you offer such a policy at a premium low enough for public agencies to justify buying? And even if so, I see a lawsuit risk there: "This agency must have known that Officer Dicey was a ticking time bomb -- they even took out an insurance policy on him!" How do you think your average American jury would react to that?
Voters have a lot of say in their communities' police leadership. In East Cleveland, where this happened, the police chief is directly appointed by the mayor. In many places, sheriffs are directly elected. If voters were on the hook for paying for the negative externalities of the "tough on crime" policies they support, they might make better decisions.
Source: Grew up in Cleveland.
On the flip side, I worry that it would have the opposite effect of thickening the blue line, as officers are more and more incentivized towards cover up.
This way you reward officers that don't have issues and penalize the ones that do. Suddenly transferring a bad officer to make him someone else's problem doesn't work as he wont be able to get "jerk insurance".
Exactly the wrong thing to do. Civil penalties will be never be sufficient to deter bad behavior like this. Letting cops (or rent-a-cops) carry "insurance" will even further shield them from the true costs of their action -- and deaden their inborn capacities for empathy and common sense even further, also.
Simply put, in egregious and utterly indefensible cases like these, law enforcement officials need to held criminally liable for their actions. That means: jail time; felony convictions (where appropriate); and temporary or (where appropriate) lifetime bans on the privilege of serving in a similar capacity, in either the public or private sphere.
And in this case of what happened to Arnold Black -- all of the above (including a lifetime ban) would seem to be entirely appropriate.
Well said. They're citizens working for citizens. They should be shielded no more than a first time offender guilty of ANY violent crime.
On a similar note, many states have pretty hefty consequences if you leave a pet in a vehicle and it dies. Every once in a while a police officer will leave s service dog in a vehicle and it will die and the police want to exempt themselves from the same consequences...
Police, EMT's and Firefighters are underpaid globally, and in the US somewhat especially and the US police has somewhat a long history of potential abuse by the police (tho we do need to take it's size into account), I don't think that what is effectively a tax on police officers would result in any beneficial results. This is not that much different than paying teachers based on standardized test scores which is a policy that to outsiders seems smart but once you dig even a little under the surface you realize how idiotic it is.
Malpractice insurance will do nothing but to drive even more people away from law enforcement, it will also actually hinder the investigative and disciplinary process regarding true abuse cases because insurance companies love nothing more than settle.
Malpractice insurance for cops will turn any abuse complaint be it true or false into a standardized pay out process just like virtually any other insurance claim out there, yes there will be some investigation by insurance adjusters but like in most cases it would be superficial and just for due diligence and not for the truth.
Malpractice insurance makes as much sense as privatizing the police force, the police must be kept public because that whom they serve, they do not protect the state, they do not protect the city, they serve the people and that's what make them different from the military and other law enforcement organizations.
I totally agree that police should be held accountable for their actions though. A pet peeve of mine is the display of their "gang colors" (black/blue/black) stickers on their cars - as if they should get special treatment.
l Daniel Chong[0] was held five days in a very similar situation in California. He only got $4 mil. Younger guy, drank his own piss, broke his eye glasses and wrote 'sorry mom' on his arm when he thought he was going to die. Kidneys were close to shutting down when they let him out. Makes me sick and angry. Stories like this are why people hate cops. No excuse for this.
0.http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/30/justice/california-dea-set...
Quote: "The city of East Cleveland told WJW television that the officers named in the suit no longer work at the department."
I think Oakland shows elections work both ways. One way, we pick leaders who represent our deeply held views. The other, elections force us, the electorate, to face facts about what combination of policies produces a workable governing consensus, and maybe even changes our views to create a consensus. When it comes to Oakland mayor, we just randomly declare a preference in the dark and someone is declared winner with no real way to form a coalition.
California's new top two system on the other hand is great. In liberal or conservative areas we get offered two meaningful choices that reflect the ideological split in the area. That is, do we want to be radical progressives or just pro-business liberals? Alternately are we reactionary conservatives or more just chamber of commerce Republicans? This gives real choice to the general election electorate and helps forge meaningful consensus.
Unions are not democracies either, yet are incredibly strong.
Though if I read this correctly, some of it will not be paid by the city: "East Cleveland Police Chief Ralph Spotts did not appear at trial. [...] Of the other $12 million in punitive damages, $11 million was found against Spotts himself, DiCello said."
We're essentially paying for them to commit crime that we end up paying for with settlements. It takes away from other things in the budget. The city pays settlements, now the city needs money for school programs, and the rest of the public services. Police are working overtime. They get stressed out. They beat some guy up and then the cycle starts over again.
The city in turn needs state money, the state needs federal money. They don't have it so they print more up. Somewhere in another part of the country is another state sucking dick for federal money. It's one of the many reasons our deficit is the way it is. At what point do we say enough is enough. We can't keep spending money on this shit. Where is the accountability? I apologize for being crass. But we're literally paying for all of it.
It is unusual for a police officer to incriminate himself.
> When asked to produce evidence from the traffic stop in the discovery phase of the trial, the city of East Cleveland told a judge overseeing Black's civil suit that they did not have dash cam video or police reports from the incident, DiCello said
If Hicks hadn't incriminated himself, it sounds like there was no evidence to support Blacks claims.
> Black also testified that the officers put him in the storage closet to hide the severity of his injuries.
Normally if the police injure a suspect, the police charge the injured suspect with assaulting an officer.
> Hicks testified at the civil trial that Police Chief Ralph Spotts confronted him several days after Black's arrest and forced him to resign. Hicks also testified that Spotts encouraged a culture of violence within the East Cleveland Police Department.
Hicks must have been offered some sort of amnesty.
I don't know how the system works, but from what I have learnt from TV & movies, I guess took the deal to confess, in exchange for a lighter sentence.
> If Hicks hadn't incriminated himself, it sounds like there was no evidence to support Blacks claims.
We already know Black was locked up, bruised, and who his arresting officers were. I seriously doubt if Hicks testified out of the goodness of his heart.
The U.S. is a large country, and local police departments are managed by themselves, so there's a lot of local and regional variation, but within the bounds you'd expect from "humans that self-selected for a position of power and authority". It's hard to make a categorical statement beyond "Beware those with power over you."
On the other hand, there should be criminal charges against the cops.
Unfortunately, this probably will be significantly reduced on appeal.
It's much less fine if you honestly believe you could die in there.
Would you rather the city had to pay $22 million in damages, and take active steps to prevent their city police from engaging in kidnapping, assault, and false imprisonment?
Or, would you rather the city paid only $220k, and it became the new normal?
> On the other hand, there should be criminal charges against the cops.
In this country, the judicial system cannot police itself. Asking police to police police is an exercise in futility, and civilian oversight is nearly always subject to regulatory capture, as the oversight boards will eventually be composed of people who have a strong incentive to side with the police rather than "criminals".