A central way that police violence and police impunity is perpetuated is through financial immunization of officers. For several years, legal scholars have been examining the role that public and private insurers can play in reforming police and increasing accountability in jurisdictions that carry municipal liability insurance—a type of insurance that many small municipalities and some larger ones rely on to some degree. Insurance is a vital system for regulating behavior.

For example, municipal-level insurers compel police agencies to adopt policies that reduce misconduct (e.g., amending use of force policies) and can raise premiums in response to violations or deny coverage altogether. Most large cities self-insure, which means that misconduct-related payouts due to civil lawsuits come from city budgets, so their police conduct policies and practices are not affected by private insurers. Because misconduct lawsuits tend to be paid out from a city’s general budget or insurer, police departments, like individual officers, rarely pay.

Officers who are repeatedly sued for misconduct are also rarely punished and have little financial incentive to change their behavior. Thus, a central way that police violence and police impunity is perpetuated is through financial immunization of officers. A central way that police violence and police impunity is perpetuated is through financial immunization of officers.

One potential accountability mechanism and alternative means of reducing legal liability for police and municipalities that has been largely overlooked by the public and policing scholars is mandatory individual professional liability (misconduct) insurance for officers. This novel accountability mechanism would work like automobile insurance. Drivers who engage in serious and repeated car accidents have higher insurance premiums. Likewise, officers who engage in grave and repeated incidents of misconduct would have higher premiums.

Thus, officers would have financial incentives to avoid misconduct and the increased premiums that they would then have to pay. If a driver has too many accidents, a car insurer can drop coverage, and the driver is no longer permitted to drive. Likewise, if an officer were to commit repeated misconduct, a private insurer could drop coverage. Furthermore, police departments could require officers to carry their own insurance. If they could not get such insurance, police officers, especially repeat offenders, would become unemployable, taken off the streets, and no longer pose a threat to public safety.

Graffiti proclaims, “Abolish the Police,” “Peace,” “BLM,” and
“Love” on the wall of Moon Palace Books. Photo by Stephen Wulff.

In recent years, Minneapolis has been at the center of reform efforts to require police to carry professional liability insurance. In 2016, the Committee for Professional Policing (CFPP), a police accountability group in Minneapolis, Minnesota, attempted to make Minneapolis the first city nationwide to require municipal-level police to carry professional liability insurance. Although a 2016 ballot campaign ultimately failed, CFPP raised national consciousness about this novel, potential reform. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, CFPP leaders—along with other major police accountability groups in Minnesota, including two chapters of Black Lives Matter—have proposed a host of reforms to end police violence, including a renewed push to require officers to carry such insurance.

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