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.
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.
Yeah but apparently the cops themselves usually get to decide if they acted in good faith.
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.
Wouldn’t they just quit? Why not just suggest firing the whole lot of them if you’re fine with replacing them?
It doesn’t matter if they quit or not. It’s the police department that pays damages, no matter if the cops still work there or not (this is how it works now). Once the retirement found looses some $ and the retirements gets lowered cops will be very quick to report bad apples before they actually kill someone (as they should be doing now).
You are incredibly optimistic. I would bet money they just start making deals with criminals like they used to.
I don’t think I’m optimistic at all. Police departments already pay out damages. It’s not some wishful thinking. Police already lie, plant evidence, threaten witnesses and make deals with criminals. And they still do lose civil cases and pay. Of course it only happens in the most extreme cases but it does actually happen. If each such case meant they lose money they would try not to have such cases. How? By getting rid of the most aggressive officers. It would not fix all the issues but it would help.