Editorial: Who pays the bill for sheriff misconduct? You do

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : Ideally, monetary judgments attributable to any kind of law enforcement misconduct would be paid by the department responsible for them, creating a built-in incentive for sheriff and police leaders to adopt internal policies to prevent similar behavior in the future.
46% : If law enforcement agencies were private businesses, they would buy insurance to cover legal liabilities, and those insurers would respond to large judgments by requiring a comprehensive overhaul of operations.
44% : But in law enforcement, there are several broken links in the accountability chain.
41% : The victims and survivors of law enforcement misconduct who can't go after individual officers can still sue police and sheriff's departments, resulting in billions of dollars of liability nationwide -- $2 billion over five years for the nation's 20 largest police agencies, according to a 2020 Wall Street Journal analysis.

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