How about lawsuits against the police for bad behavior get paid out of their pension fund, instead of by the taxpayer?

I REALLY like this. Take it out of the pool of pensions for all cops in that department. Maybe they'll start to police themselves a little.

This creates terrible incentives, though. Are you going to proactively help with a civil rights case if it means your pension disappears?

If the person suing "dies in a random armed robbery, so sad", are you going to put maximum effort into investigating their murder?

If you see your coworker destroying evidence of misconduct, do you look the other way because reporting it costs everyone in the department money?

They already don't help with civil rights cases. You can make the rats not have their pensions impacted.

The problem with that is that impacts those who may have no influence on the situation (retirees receiving benefits from the pension plan).

Alternatively, you could require insurance, similar to medical malpractice insurance, that pays out for law enforcement malfeasance. If you’re uninsurable due to your actions (egregious and/or chronic), you’re no longer a cop. The cost to your colleagues (premiums) also goes up because of your behavior.

This takes the financial burden off taxpayers, but still uses economic incentives to encourage the behavior we expect from public servants.

> that impacts those who may have no influence on the situation

It puts a strong incentive on those to take responsibility for their coworkers. To cultivate a culture of integrity, through interactions, through hiring and firing, through setting an example for those you lead. Cops love to talk about having each other's backs; let's see them put those words into action where it counts.

Retirees are not the coworkers, they are already out of the system. You’re shifting risk from current employees to past employees unless you pursue an insurance model, which is intended to do precisely what you describe: pool and price risk, both individually and collectively, among active law enforcement.

I’m okay with retirees suffering if their colleagues are committing murder. They are incentivized to stay connected and provide guidance. At some point someone has to bear the burden. Right now it’s the tax payers, present and future. I would rather it be the police officers past present and future.

Past employees likely worked alongside current employees. They certainly placed the group's culture on its trajectory. They have a leg in the game.

I like your idea of malfeasance insurance.

Premiums could be priced in such a way that it takes into account your personal record, to incentivise your own behaviour; your local/metro PD's record, to incentivise them policing each other; and the state's record in an attempt to address systemic and cultural issues.

Your body cam "malfunctioned"? Congratulations, you just increased the insurance premiums for yourself and all your colleagues.

There's a lot of spread, but yeah: in general police work pays much better than jobs with similar qualifications. They're also almost universally union jobs with excellent job security and public benefits.

It isn't the union that makes the cost of police high, its that they're a select group: physically fit(when they're hired!) yet no criminal or antisocial record(surprisingly rare), and fairly intelligent. Add the expensive training that goes into policing and you get what you pay for.

None of what you said is factually accurate. We don't pay enlistees in the armed services high salaries, and they're usually physically fit. No criminal record? Depends on the department since each sets its own standards. Expensive training? Many departments have academy training that's 8 weeks. If a department uses a longer 6 month training cycle, the average tuition cost is around $7K.

My point is we should pay cops very high salaries, $300k+ to attract those that might go into other professions.

You seem to equate high salary with compassion. What is this notion based on?

It's less about compassion and more about risk. Risk in the sense of the physical danger an officer goes into, but also in the sense that we are removing protections for the officer and holding them to a higher standard.

The most common cause of death for police officers is traffic fatalities. Should we pay highway construction crews 300K+?

That’s a terrible analogy. Obviously they’re more at risk of dying a violent death and that’s why they need to pay more

Not really: they're safer at work than you are at home. Police work is very safe in the USA. But it can be very unpleasant and stressful.

The idea that policing is inherently dangerous is most useful to police when negotiating the next contract.

That is absolutely not true and I don’t know why you think that, other than you’re super sheltered. You have no clue what you’re talking about

Tell me why the Mexican Mafia has no teeth. Enlighten me. Tell me why the Aryan Brotherhood is less dangerous than Kubernetes

It’s not ever worth discussing with y’all, seriously. The privilege here is so insane, you’ve obviously never been anywhere near a ghetto

Your assumption is entirely wrong. I equate high pay to high expectations and higher quality applicants.

Why?

We can assume x% of applicants are actually qualified, instead of "Good enough and we need bodies". If we increase pay, we increase total applicants - which, assuming x stays constant, means we end up with more actually qualified cops.

Why not?

Judging from this thread full of compassionate people, it's pretty clear to me that they should be the ones being cops, and not the current cops.

So we should compensate cops the equivalent salary of a software developer, to create incentives for a career change, and then we can train former cops as software developers. We might end up with more bugs in software, but at least there will not be any police abuse any more.

Like the 'Blackwater' PMC/merc type of guys?

Maybe you are right, but it didn't seem to work in Hong Kong. Here a new recruit is paid nearly 6000 USD / month after tax, double that of a new software engineer. I think you've seen the outcome in the news.