It May Be Time To Require That Cops Purchase Malpractice Insurance …

Doctors, lawyers, and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als study for many years to qual­i­fy for their cho­sen dis­ci­plines. They also have to stay informed on new find­ings, new rec­om­men­da­tions, and new poli­cies in their respec­tive fields, even though they under­went mul­ti­ple years of train­ing, and do not have the pow­er to take the life of any­one.
Additionally, they are required to car­ry large mal­prac­tice insur­ance in order to be able to prac­tice their trade. 

Police offi­cers are trained for six months and thrown out in the streets with awe­some pow­ers, (includ­ing the pow­er to kill peo­ple). Yet many of them do not even know the laws they are try­ing to enforce. In many cas­es, their inter­ac­tions with the gen­er­al pub­lic are ego-dri­ven, dis­re­spect­ful pow­er trips.
They are not required to pur­chase mal­prac­tice insur­ance to com­pen­sate for their mis­takes. And so when they step out­side the line as many often do, on the rare occa­sions they are held account­able civil­ly, tax­pay­ers are forced to pick up the tab. Sometimes to the tune of mil­lions of dol­lars.
It may be time for police to car­ry mal­prac­tice insur­ance.
It will not be a panacea for fix­ing reck­less and vio­lent cops but it is one more thing that ought to go toward rein­ing in rogue ele­ments with­in police departments. 

Fort Worth inter­im police chief Ed Kraus stressed at a news con­fer­ence on Tuesday that it “makes sense” that Jefferson “would have a gun if she felt she was being threat­ened or if there was some­one in the back­yard.”
“It’s only appro­pri­ate that Ms. Jefferson would have a gun,” Merritt said, accord­ing to the Dallas Morning News. “When you think there’s some­one prowl­ing around in the back at 2 in the morn­ing, you may need to arm your­self.”
Kraus said Tuesday that there was “absolute­ly no excuse for this inci­dent and the per­son respon­si­ble will be held account­able.”
The inter­im chief also acknowl­edged that his department’s ear­li­er deci­sion to release a still image of a gun found at Jefferson’s home — but with­out any con­text or expla­na­tion of its link to the case — had not been the right one.
The depart­ment had faced crit­i­cism for the image. Merritt, the attor­ney for Jefferson’s fam­i­ly, accused police of attempt­ing to alter the nar­ra­tive of the case and blame the vic­tim. Kraus said at a Monday press con­fer­ence that the depart­ment had released the image to show there had been a weapon “involved.” “However, we’re home­own­ers in the state of Texas. I can’t imag­ine most of us, if we thought we had some­body out­side our house who shouldn’t be, and we had access to a firearm — that we wouldn’t act very sim­i­lar­ly to how she act­ed,” Kraus said, CBS News report­ed. 
“The offi­cers, they try hard every day to try to make this city bet­ter,” Kraus said. “I likened it to a bunch of ants build­ing an anthill, and if some­body comes with a hose and wash­es it away they just have to start from scratch.”
Story orig­i­nat­ed @ ; https://​www​.huff​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​a​t​a​t​i​a​n​a​-​j​e​f​f​e​r​s​o​n​-​f​o​r​t​-​w​o​r​t​h​-​g​u​n​_​n​_​5​d​a​6​c​a​6​b​e​4​b​0​0​2​e​3​3​e​7​7​3​f6c

The release of the gun was designed to cre­ate the impres­sion that the vic­tim of this trag­ic mess was jus­ti­fi­ably killed.
Police offi­cers con­tin­ue to act out­side their train­ing and oper­a­tional pro­to­cols cre­at­ing tremen­dous pain for cit­i­zens and at extreme costs to tax­pay­ers.
Police offi­cers are peo­ple, they are allowed to make mis­takes, but when they make mis­takes they are expect­ed to fess up to those mis­takes.
Police offi­cers are giv­en extreme­ly wide lat­i­tude to do their jobs. Some would argue too much lat­i­tude.
Every cop, even the last joined rook­ie, has the pow­er of life and death in his hands. It is for that rea­son that this writer has con­sis­tent­ly argued that train­ing should not and can­not be suf­fi­cient as a one-off event.

No one will hear a peep out of me when crim­i­nals threat­en the lives of the inno­cent, or law-enforce­ment offi­cers, and are shot if nec­es­sary.
What I have a prob­lem with is the gung-ho atti­tudes of far too many police offi­cers for what­ev­er rea­son, which leads to the harm, and killing of inno­cent peo­ple.
It is shock­ing to watch the behav­ior of police offi­cers these days, when they deal with cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties. One would think that instead of ser­vants they are over­seers and mas­ters deal­ing with their slaves.
Police are esca­lat­ing triv­ial and incon­se­quen­tial non­sense and mak­ing them arrestable events, even though they insti­gat­ed the unrest in the first place.
This rests with their civil­ian boss­es in the state leg­is­la­tures, they should be held accountable.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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