Roommates who sued a Maryland county Monday claim police officers illegally entered their apartment without a warrant, detained them at gunpoint without justification and unnecessarily shot their pet dog, which was left paralyzed and ultimately euthanized.
The dog, a boxer mix named Hennessey, did not attack the three officers who entered the apartment before two of them shot the animal with their firearms and the third fired a stun gun at it, according to the federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks at least $16 million in damages over the June 2, 2021 encounter, which started with Prince George’s County police officers responding to a report of a dog bite at an apartment complex where the four plaintiffs lived. What happened next was captured on police body camera video and video from a plaintiff’s cellphone.
Pretty fucked up, but not surprising… Why do settlements come from uninvolved taxpayers, rather than the police “union”!?
Paying damages out of police retirement founds would be a simple, one step, foolproof solution to this problem. You don’t want lower retirement? Stop breaking the law. Oh, you’re one of the 5 good cops in the country and this would hurt you even though you did nothing wrong? Actually report the bad cops instead just watching. Thanks.
Require officers to carry liability insurance like doctors
Except I don’t think the officers are ever found liable, only the police departments.
The legal fiction that is qualified immunity needs to be banned. It was just made up buy judges.
It’s fine when used properly. When acting in good faith, officers, just like any company employee, should generally not be held liable.
However, if they are not acting in good faith, or their actions deviate from good practice, then much like a chemical company employee dumping something toxic out into the environment, then yes they should face personal civil and criminal liability.
For example, if there’s an active shooter, and the police shoot and kill him, I think most people would agree that that’s acceptable, and the family of the shooter should not have grounds to sue over the shooter’s death.
If the police walk up and shoot your dog for no reason, that’s unacceptable and they should absolutely face personal liability.
Per the article:
I hope the court disagrees, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
That gives every cop a financial motive to lie for each other, cover up incidents and silence witnesses.
No it doesn’t. It does the exact opposite.
When a psycho cop in the department shoots an innocent kid in the back, the other cops will have to decide either to plant a gun on him or have their their retirement funds drained by a lawsuit.
So you’re saying now cops don’t plant guns on people, don’t lie and don’t intimidate witnesses? Have you seen the news, like ever?
This is exactly the solution. I won’t hold my breath though…
Not being able to breathe and police brutality? Name a more infamous combo…
It’s really not a solution. It just means when the pension fund gets low, they get bailouts from government anyway.
You just made that shit up. This proposal hasn’t even been put in place so how could anyone know for certain that would happen??
The federal government already did it with the teamsters. Social security exists to bailout seniors from poverty. There is no way that the government is just going to allow large amounts of people to just get fucked on retirement.
Ok, so I’m thinking that theyo pay out some money in damages and the retirement found looses 10% of assets. The projected retirements for cops that are still working gets lowered. The cops closest to retirement lose less, for example 5%, younger cops loose more, for example 15%.
You’re saying that in this situation those younger cops will just keep doing what they’re doing hoping that they will lose all the money and get bailed out? I’m thinking they will start complaining about the aggressive cops that cost THEM actually money. It’s not about taking away all their retirement. It’s about slowly lowering it down so that they start paying attention. I think it would work. But of course it will never happen. We’re just playing fantasy politics here.
The police are funded by taxpayers, so it doesn’t matter if it’s the city or the police that pay for it, you still foot the bill no matter what. The only solution where citizens don’t lose is if cops are required to carry personal malpractice insurance, like doctors. IMO making cops personally liable for their murders is a good place to start.
it does matter though because if the money for paying for damages illegally caused by police comes out of their budget they’ll at least feel that until the next year’s budget kicks in. As-is, police are completely removed from any responsibility for their actions.
FWIW, these judgements are typically paid by the city’s insurance, although that’s also funded by the taxpayers. I don’t know how department policies and the like affect the premiums, but I would really be interested in learning.
I feel like it’d be worse to have taxpayers care even less about what police are doing. That said, it’s mind-blowing taxpayers don’t seem to care as it is
Because you never arm up and surround the precincts.
Shitlibs screeching in 3…2…