Went to NSU’s Homecoming Parade and game Saturday.
NSU beat Lincoln (CA) 68-0, which sounds really impressive. NSU is now 6-3 on the season, their first winning season since 2011. That’s huge. Kudos to the team and coach Darrin Chiaverini. He has absolutely turned the program around, and I hope he stays for a while.
On the other hand…
The Lincoln Oaklanders have been called the “Bishop Sycamore” of collegiate football, and that’s from one of their former players. The school enrolls about 500 students, and they only brought about 25 players to the game. USA Today covered the school in this 2024 article, and didn’t have much good to say about the school.
Maybe NSU should look elsewhere for their next homecoming opponent.
Police Accountability
When it comes to police accountability, I’ve long held that more cops should be held individually responsible for civil judgments over their actions. It chafes me that the citizens end up paying when cops get sued over civil rights abuses. We end up paying twice: once to defend the cops, and again when the agency loses.
But was I wrong?
According to this week’s Parting Shot newsletter from The Marshall Project, some cities are now declining to indemnify their officers in certain civil judgments where the officer is held to have been negligent. That means the officer alone is on the hook for the often multi-million-dollar settlement.
Why is that a bad thing?
Because in many states, much of what an officer might have for funds—their homes, retirement savings, or other personal property—is protected from judgment. That generally leaves their salary which is usually modest. The average police salary across the US is $79,000 annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That sounds like a lot of money, but remember it’s an average, and an officer still has to pay their regular bills and support their family. That means the victim in the case may have a hard time actually recovering any damages.
At first glance, it sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? After all, why should the city or county pay for an officer’s negligence?
But isn’t the local jurisdiction responsible at some level for that negligence? They trained the officer, or paid to have them trained.
Or perhaps the local jurisdiction was aware of bad conduct by the officer and failed to discipline or retrain the officer. Perhaps worse, they continued to employ them even after multiple complaints.
What Then?
I think the solution is multi-faceted.
In some cases, an injured party could sue both the officer and the local jurisdiction separately. Assuming the officer is found to have acted negligently, they’re held financially responsible to some degree. But the local jurisdiction also needs to be held financially responsible for their failure to mitigate the issue beforehand via training and policies.
Should that be a separate case? It’s more expensive and would take longer, and the injured party may be limited as to time. Maybe the local jurisdiction needs to indemnify the officer, pay the claim, and then file their own case to recover the funds from the officer.
I’ve heard it suggested that law enforcement officers need to start carrying insurance, like doctors and attorneys do. The police unions don’t generally like the idea, but I think they’ll like it better than the idea of officers being on the hook for a multi-million-dollar settlement.
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