☆ Opinion: It's time SCC kicks qualified police immunity to the curb

Continuing an exclusive Opp Now series, retired police officer and Libertarian presidential runner Mike ter Maat analyzes the county's Sheriff Department. While the Dept has competitive pay and mid-level transfers, requiring private sector liability insurance (in lieu of qualified immunity) would enforce accountability for “bad officers” and cultivate a free market-driven police force.

SCC's Sheriff Department is relatively highly paying and has brought in lots of outside mid-level career transfers. This is great because it shows a willingness to compete for the best. That’s what you want to see a county do to get the best sheriff department possible.

Moving forward, the object of the game is to make policing more like other businesses, to introduce market forces, accountability, differentiation among levels of performance. We must work in the SCC to get a system in place where good officers get paid more, mediocre officers get paid less, and bad officers get fired.

A piece of that involves replacing qualified immunity with private-sector liability insurance (either via local or state mandates requiring that officers carry insurance from a company outside the municipality). This would be a beneficial check on the system. Today, the general deference by courts is to police officers, which I believe has gone too far. We need courts to hold officers accountable when they’ve made egregious mistakes; but qualified immunity inhibits them from doing that.

The real beauty of private liability insurance in our police force is that a third party outside wouldn’t be held back by union rules. An insurance company will demand all available information to provide insurance for any particular officer. The system would no longer be as opaque.

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Image by Ian Abbott