https://www.odmp.org/search/year
The list above highlights how dangerous the job of being a police officer is.
Police do not benefit from qualified immunity if a judge and jury determine the police officer was acting outside the scope of their authority and duties.
"That standard requires a substantial degree of certainty that the officer was acting outside the scope of their authority before officers can be sued successfully."
We could provide more guidelines to define their scope of authority, but we need to be careful that we are not creating more problems than we are solving.
Also, qualified immunity does not protect police officers from criminal prosecution, internal affairs investigations, and other proceedings. It only relates to the ability to sue police.
Now let's get real.
Rule Number 1, things never work as intended.
If it did, Congress would represent "the people", not their political party and their rich donors.
Today, there are many ways individuals in high "risk of lawsuits" occupations protect themselves. If qualified immunity were removed, then a police officer with any assets would be insane not to do so. One common strategy is the use of trusts to asset protect oneself from lawsuits.
This tactic is common in Florida among physicians who do not bother with malpractice insurance. They simply protect their assets from lawsuits by putting them in trusts that cannot be attached by virtue of a lawsuit judgement. See link at the bottom.
This practice emerged when it became too easy to sue and awards began to skyrocket, making malpractice insurance too expensive to obtain. The result is patients deserving compensation for the wrong acts of doctors get nothing. Things never work like intended.
Of course, many police officers have nothing worth suing over, so you are largely targeting those police officers who have saved for their retirement or families.
I were a police union representative, I would simply include liability coverage in the next police contract negotiation, which means taxpayers not police officers will bear the cost of lawsuits against police officers and the union would provide police officers with asset protection legal counseling that would be charged through to the police and passed on to taxpayers... does anyone really think the cost of malpractice insurance is not passed through to consumers.
Moreover, if my experience in health care translates to police encounters. Lawsuits would come from three groups.
1) the poor would sue hoping for a settlement. There are lawyers that process lawsuits even when the allegation is weak at best, since settling is often easier than defending against a lawsuit.
2) the rich would sue just to put the police officer through hell as a warning, not to mess with them. They can afford attorneys more easily than police can.
3) those who actually have a real case would sue. They can sue today, but they would have a better chance of winning. Of course, if the police officer was asset protected, they would get nothing. If the police officer has liability coverage under a union contract, the residents would see their tax bills skyrocket.
So, either property tax bills would skyrocket to fund the cost of the incremental liability risk or police officers in communities without the tax base to provide insurance would simply have police officer's asset protect themselves.
So, what is the point? In this country we fall in love with ideas and never really think about the fact that for every action there will be a reaction... in this case... you will find wealthier police officers asset protecting themselves and police unions looking for taxpayer funded liability insurance for their members... do we really want property taxes to skyrocket driving up rents for the poor?
https://prosperlaw.com/check-doctor-malpractice-insurance-florida/
