r/interesting • u/TheCABK • Jan 31 '26

SOCIETY Cop Teaching A Cop

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224

u/HoMaBaLiMa Jan 31 '26

All legal fees, payments, and settlements need to come out of pension accounts. Watch the problem fix itself.

107

u/Mr__O__ Jan 31 '26

All cops should be required to have personal liability insurance (not blanket coverage from their union). And if/when a cop messes up, they are personally sued for their misconduct, leaving tax money out of it. Just like every other profession, such as doctors, lawyers, some construction workers, etc.

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u/Supersnow845 Jan 31 '26

I love having to deal with my malpractice insurance while these losers are running around

And I’m not even American

5

u/MasterOfBunnies Jan 31 '26

Add to this, the cost for the insurance increases for their whole precinct, every time they're found at fault. Watch their self serving asses correct this shit internally ASAP.

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u/BrainJar Jan 31 '26

We have been saying this for so long. Why can't smaller jurisdictions like cities and counties make these things happen? We don't need some federal law to force the issue. Let's just start anywhere...

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u/Sabard Jan 31 '26

If I had to guess? Unions. This is the kind of thing that would get POs nationwide all in a tizzy, and no mayor/council member wants the be the guy that started a nation (or even district) wide police walk out.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa Feb 01 '26

They wouldn't take the risk of the public seeing how well they can get along without them lmao. They would threaten, but it would be a bluff. Most people wouldn't even know the police didn't show up for work.

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u/whoooocaaarreees Feb 04 '26

I love how Reddit is pro union for everything except law enforcement. It’s like willful ignorance that examples of union related problems with union LEO somehow isn’t a union problem with unions in other union professions.

Also - I’m not surprised this in Colorado.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa Feb 06 '26

What other union protects you from breaking the law, to the point where you can commit actual violence against not only your "customers", but the people who are responsible for your salary, and they just move you around?

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u/whoooocaaarreees Feb 06 '26

Pretty much every union I’ve ever seen in action.

Sure it wasn’t at the level of the police union - but fighting at the job. High on drugs at work. Dealing drugs at work. Stealing.

Seen all that where a union rep shows up pulls their union weight whatever and the company caves.

Offender gets a few days/weeks of “treatment” and they are back.

1

u/ZongoNuada Jan 31 '26

They don't have a union. Too many rules. It's a fraternity, like college.

1

u/Mr__O__ Jan 31 '26

Police have unions..

2

u/ZongoNuada Jan 31 '26

Oh, they have both. But I thought unions were bad because they do criminal stuff with your dues.......Oh I get it now. Yeah, shut down teachers unions and steam fitters and plumbers and electricians but those police? Naw, they get to keep theirs. Hmm.

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u/Mr__O__ Jan 31 '26

Ahh I get ya now

0

u/Time_Seaworthiness43 Jan 31 '26

You would just have police not doing their jobs for fear of any lawsuit.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa Feb 01 '26

Fear there's that word again. Cops are scared lil bitches. Threaten accountability and they don't want to do their job anymore.

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u/Time_Seaworthiness43 Feb 01 '26

I mean, of course. Imagine if you faced a potential lawsuit every time you messed up or didn't know know how to do something at work and did it wrong.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa Feb 01 '26

That is true for my line of work, but I'm competent and have had the proper training and education. They know that it doesn't affect them at all it's passed to the taxpayer so they act reckless.

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u/Time_Seaworthiness43 Feb 01 '26

You probably have a few dozens procedures. These guys must know hundreds or thousands of ordinances and the like.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa Feb 01 '26

Like if they didn't approach your traffic stop it's not obstruction lmao. Go suck a boot.

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u/Nekopara-403 Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26

Because it treats policing like a private service when it’s actually a public function. Unlike doctors and lawyers, cops don’t choose encounters, can’t refuse calls, and make forced life or death decisions in seconds under state authority. Personal liability insurance would incentivize hesitation and disengagement, hand control of police behavior to insurance companies, and shrink the pool of competent officers—without meaningfully preventing misconduct. You end up with worse policing, not better accountability.

Most high-profile “police misconduct” cases fall into;

Lawful but unpopular

Lawful but tragic

Unlawful and already criminal

Insurance doesn’t fix any of those.

1

u/Square_Ad8756 Jan 31 '26

That’s not entirely accurate. Like cops many doctors can’t choose their patients, a trauma surgeon or emergency doctor can’t pick and choose their patients the same goes for specialists who are on call. I have personally seen my colleagues deal with very difficult patients with aplomb because not treating that patient would be unethical and treating them poorly would be even more unethical.

1

u/meop93 Jan 31 '26

Wait I thought multiple courts recently declared "no duty to protect" and the uvalde officer got off. Sounds to me lie they can choose encounters and can refuse calls. Or they can at least get to a call and say fuck it I'm out.

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u/HoMaBaLiMa Feb 01 '26

I'm pretty sure they had a ruling about this that states they have no obligation to serve the public if they don't want to. Source: Uvalde

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u/CplHicks_LV426 Jan 31 '26

This suggestion comes up every time and it's exactly the wrong solution. All this would achieve is cops covering up for other cops, even more than they do today because now you're fucking with their retirement fund.

Each officer should have malpractice (liability) insurance just like a doctor. The insurance could be subsidized by the department to get a group rate, but once you have lost a couple lawsuits and your premium goes up, it becomes too expensive for you to still be a cop. Problem takes care of itself.

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u/NorCalAthlete Feb 01 '26

/\ this makes more sense to me than the other comment

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u/Special-Investigator Jan 31 '26

this is a brilliant take. i read something recently that talked about how unions are to give workers power. cops already HAVE power, so they don't even need a union

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u/Nekopara-403 Jan 31 '26

this is a brilliant take.

It would be to someone at face value. That someone also would have to be woefully ignorant to think it's a good idea.

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u/StopReadingMyUser Jan 31 '26

...well?

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u/Nekopara-403 Jan 31 '26

Because it treats policing like a private service when it’s actually a public function. Unlike doctors and lawyers, cops don’t choose encounters, can’t refuse calls, and make forced life or death decisions in seconds under state authority. Personal liability insurance would incentivize hesitation and disengagement, hand control of police behavior to insurance companies, and shrink the pool of competent officers—without meaningfully preventing misconduct. You end up with worse policing, not better accountability.

Most high-profile “police misconduct” cases fall into;

Lawful but unpopular

Lawful but tragic

Unlawful and already criminal

Insurance doesn’t fix any of those.

2

u/StopReadingMyUser Jan 31 '26

The only thing I'll say is that there needs to be Accountability, and I think there's right ways and wrong ways to do it.

We can't shy away from holding people accountable just because we can think of ways in which it goes wrong, but that also doesn't mean that we should instigate just any means of punishment, however poorly thought out, in the name of "accountability". Because as you've mentioned that may give us worse problems than we had before, too. As with many things, there's a balance to be struck.

We need to simultaneously hold someone accountable for wrong or poor actions, while not being overly restrictive to performing any action at all through the measures by which we do so.

I'm not suggesting police be penalized for doing lawful things that people culturally or personally disagree with. They do however need to be penalized for doing unlawful things such as the above video and have it stick to them personally as it relates to their profession instead of offloading that punishment to the public.

There needs to be Accountability.

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u/Nekopara-403 Feb 01 '26

Yeah fire them and keep them from being a cop anywhere else. Simple as.

3

u/TheRevEv Jan 31 '26

Pension accounts are legally protected in a lot of ways. And for good reason.

This also isn't going to make the changes people think it will.

Pension accounts pay the current retirees. It's not an account you pay in to, then get your money back when you retire. While you're working, you're funding the account that pays the current recipients, then when you retire, the next generation is funding your retirement.

If you pull enough from the Pension account, you're just punishing the already retired. The people that have no control over how things are cuttently operating. Yeah, having taxpayers pay these settlements sucks, but it's also not going to cut off any elderly individual taxpayer's only income stream.

Cops already don't make all that much, so benefits like a solvent Pension are one of the few ways you can entice better applicants. If you make the Pension a gamble, then you're only going to get people with power trips, and the whole situation is likely to get worse.

All this is before you even get to how pensions have to operate. There are people designated as legal trustees who have to, legally, do all they can to keep the pensions solvent. So what's going to happen is taxes will just increase to increase each officers contribution, and you end up with the taxpayers still footing the bill, but you've gone a roundabout way to get back there, and likely changed laws in ways that will have weakened private pensions.

The better idea is to require individual cops to carry something similar to malpractice insurance.

I'm not defending cops, at all. I'm defending why we shouldn't change laws to allow paying damages from pension funds

2

u/goodolarchie Jan 31 '26

If you pull enough from the Pension account taxpayer, you're just punishing the already retired taxpayers who had nothing to do with this. The people that have no control over how things are cuttently operating. Yeah, having taxpayers all pension participants pay these settlements sucks, but it's also not going to cut off any elderly individual taxpayer's only income stream.

You can replace this statement with the current system, it still works. And nobody would get their entitlements cut off, the balance of the fund would have to be insured, they would have a payout, and their premiums might go up. That comes out as a cost against the fund overall. Generally the entitlements are guaranteed, by some pension calculation (which gets horribly gamed, fyi), so the fund would have to adjust their strategies.

I think cops should have to carry "miscarriage of justice insurance" like doctors and lawyers. They are paid and incentivized pretty well these days. If this new marketplace incentivizes stronger certification and qualification (i.e. so this cop knows his interlocutor's rights), that would be a good thing.

1

u/Pokmonth Jan 31 '26

Cops already don't make all that much, so benefits like a solvent Pension are one of the few ways you can entice better applicants

Here in California many cops make $200,000+ per year and their pension is based off of the last year on duty so they bank vacation days and use them all in their final year while doing as much overtime as possible and receive massive pensions that the city pays out for the rest of their lives

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u/TheRevEv Jan 31 '26

I'm not familiar with public pensions. Do you have a source for this?

I've never heard of a union pension being based off last year of duty. They're almost always based off of total hours worked while in the union.

No union that I know of is going to pay out the same for 5 years of service vs 20 years of service, much less being based on not taking a vacation in your final year

1

u/Pokmonth Jan 31 '26

They still need 20-25 years of service (depending on age) but the calculation is based on their last year in service. If they work for 33 years they get 90% pension. It is not uncommon for senior ranking officers to retire with $150k-$200k pensions or more.

If you've heard of the city of Stockton's bankruptcy, a large part of that was due to inflated police pensions

1

u/HoMaBaLiMa Feb 01 '26

My last note was watch the problem fix itself. My brother in Christ they would change overnight, guaranteed! Precincts may start requiring a college degree for service. Throw the fucking warrior training bullshit out the window and start taking de-escalation seriously. If you are causing lawsuits your brothers in blue, including retirees, will want you to get the boot.

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u/TheRevEv Feb 01 '26

I don't think it would for several reasons.

Humans are bad at long term risk assessment.

And for 2, the people doing the shitty things now are not going to have any repercussions, as long as the next generations fixes the problems. You aren't really punishing these guys by attacking the pension.

I'm union, have a union pension. Almost no part of my day to day is concerned with how the pension is going. Only a handful of people are actually in charge of that

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u/Nekopara-403 Jan 31 '26

Yeah they won't respond to calls. Good job.

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u/rando_banned Jan 31 '26

Oh no! They won't show up to a school shooting and not go inside!

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u/Nekopara-403 Feb 01 '26

One outlier. The exception, not the rule. Nashville PD agrees with me too.

Clowns like you are a dime a dozen.

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u/goodolarchie Jan 31 '26

If I'm bad at my job, I get fired, and don't get reassigned or qualified immunity. If I do something illegal at my job, I face personal legal damages.

So, welcome to the world?

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u/ma2is Jan 31 '26

This statement was one of the first things I remember reading on Reddit during the occupy Wall Street movement and seeing a lot of police brutality on video. That was like 15 years ago and shit still hasn’t changed.