> Trying to make broad assertions regarding who is financially responsible for the lawful execution of police power seems useless.
No. Most people are distracted by qualified immunity, but this is exactly where the rot starts - poor incentives from damaged caused by "government agents" just being waved away as if it is nobody's fault, like it was some kind of natural disaster.
The primary reform we need here is that any damage caused by government agents should start off being the responsibility of the government itself. If the government wants to shift that liability (eg your stuff was damaged because you committed a crime and were found guilty, or as part of a plea), that's fine. If the government successfully subrogates (you were hit by a cop during a high speed chase, so the government and the criminal that necessitated the high speed chase are jointly liable, and the criminal's insurance company has paid out), that's fine. But the basic default should be one of making the victims of policing whole. To do otherwise is to fail to account for the full cost of policing, taking the extra from its victims in a perverted reverse-lottery.
My point is that it makes far more sense to have insurance lawyers deal with this. It’s a much better way of aligning incentives to have large insurance companies pressure the government to operate better than individuals.
Attorneys did deal with this. Courts decided against the victim. Courts have decided against the victims in much larger cases, where even more money would have been spent on attorneys. Fundamentally, there has to be a cause of action in order for insurance companies to apply any "pressure".
The attorneys you buy, and the hours and angles they’re willing to explore for a single $16k payout is very different than the attorneys your insurance company buys for 50 $50k payouts.
I would say victims of erroneous policing. No compensation is due if the person who suffered the loss is convicted, or the person who was convicted had ongoing permission to access whatever is involved even if they didn't own it.
But I would apply this to all such victims. You spend a night in jail and are not convicted, you are owed some statutory compensation which I think should at a minimum be your annual earned income/365.
> No compensation is due if the person who suffered the loss is convicted
I already included how I propose this is handled - explicit law outlining that the liability falls to someone convicted of a crime.
> or the person who was convicted had ongoing permission to access whatever is involved
I don't see why this needs to be an exception, and also if it was an exception why it wouldn't just form another avenue of unaccountable abuse (eg imagine roommates. Let's say the police bust up a whole apartment for fun - the innocent roommates really should be getting compensated for that (they're innocent, remember?), and if that damage was necessary to effect the arrest/search, the govt can then recover from the criminal.
No. Most people are distracted by qualified immunity, but this is exactly where the rot starts - poor incentives from damaged caused by "government agents" just being waved away as if it is nobody's fault, like it was some kind of natural disaster.
The primary reform we need here is that any damage caused by government agents should start off being the responsibility of the government itself. If the government wants to shift that liability (eg your stuff was damaged because you committed a crime and were found guilty, or as part of a plea), that's fine. If the government successfully subrogates (you were hit by a cop during a high speed chase, so the government and the criminal that necessitated the high speed chase are jointly liable, and the criminal's insurance company has paid out), that's fine. But the basic default should be one of making the victims of policing whole. To do otherwise is to fail to account for the full cost of policing, taking the extra from its victims in a perverted reverse-lottery.