There's probably a pretty large constituency willing to give money to bad cops' crowdfunding campaigns. Free market works both ways- lots of people would be happy to subsidize this sort of behavior as long as they can be convinced the cops are being "canceled" by "antifa" or whatever.

Even if that's the case, better those people pay for the crimes, than everyone via taxes. And, civil suits are one thing but criminal liability should be a thing too. Can't just pay that off.

No, the region that employs and directs a police officer who ends up violating civil rights must absolutely be responsible for civil remedy (money), the issue is simply that police largely will never be charged for their criminal liability.

If someone is wrongly imprisoned, injured or killed the financial remedy must not stop at the individual officer’s net worth / insurance coverage maximum or be subject to potential coverage gaps.

Additionally, everyone will still pay the cost through taxes, but now an insurance company will try to turn a profit on it and those living in regions with “good cops” will be subject to the tax as well.

"... criminal liability should be a thing too."

It's too bad the system is corrupt and they won't hold people within the system accountable.

Nearly all of the "bad cops" stories in the media, like nearly all stories in the media whatsoever, are toxoplasma:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

If there is no case to be made in defending a cop, nobody wants to make it. But then it isn't a story, because it's only a story if it's a controversy.

That creates the impression that many people are defending all of these bad cops in the clear cases, when they're really only defending them in the controversial cases.

That's basically tautological. Controversy just means people disagree. It doesn't say anything about which cases are controversial and why.

The point is that uncontroversial (i.e. the cop was definitely in the wrong and basically everybody agrees) cases exist, but nobody talks about them because there is no controversy because there is nobody prominent to argue the other side because it's indefensible.

And a system where the cops in those cases end up with unaffordable "malpractice" premiums and have to quit would be a benefit.

> If there is no case to be made in defending a cop, nobody wants to make it.

Seems like the unions will defend an officer regardless of what they did.

Of course they will, that's their job, just like a defense lawyer will defend anyone regardless of what they did.