Comment by arein3

No, I think the government paying is right. It wasn't just the offending officer acting alone that led to the gross mistreatment of this man. The officer was working within the context of a system of local government that ought to have righted the wrong on its own. But the man had to appeal to the federal government to get it righted. The fact that the system lacked enough accountability to avoid or fix this wrong shows that more than just the one officer is the problem.

Thus, the appropriate remedy should put pressure on the conduct of the whole local government, whose use of tax-payer funds is accountable to the electorate. Punishing just the one officer by depleting his private resources won't move toward systemic reform.

And finally, on the principle of the matter, the officer can't and doesn't jail people on his own power and private authority as a citizen. He does so on the power and authority of the government that grants him his office. His actions as a private citizen did not harm the man. His public actions as an agent of the government harmed the man. In other words, the government did wrong, through the officer.

I at least partly disagree, speaking from my perspective as a small-time city council member. I agree that ideally taxpayers shouldn't pay money for this kind of misconduct. But in practice, misconduct must face consequences, those affected must be made whole, the offending employee likely can't pay the judgment in full, and most importantly, the monetary judgment is the most effective way to motivate city governments and their constituents to effect change to prevent further misconduct.

I know it gets more complicated, especially with larger cities--and doubly so where states have control over police departments or similar. But in general, in a great number of cities and localities, this judgment alone would have a big impact on oversight and governance of the department, probably even if the governing body also disliked the plaintiff's political views. $835k is almost 3 mills of property tax revenue in my city. So, that's my $0.02.

In a democracy the populace should in fact bear the consequence of their own government's actions.

Try electing more sensible politicians and put more checks and balances into work to stop this from happening again if you don't want your tax money wasted on this.

The govt/state granted that sheriff the power to do that action. The govt/state therefore have a responsiblity for his actions. Otherwise companies/govt could never be held accountable (because an organisation can never take action only humans can)

When a cop does millions of dollars of damage they only choice is for tax payers to pay, or for the victims to get nothing. Definitely the cops should also face consequences though.

Cops generally don't care because it's not coming out of their pocket. And around where I live for a multitude of reasons, cops don't generally work in their hometown but the next one over. So it's not even their tax dollars paying for their fuckups (directly or indirectly through insurance and premiums).

Eh, I’d prefer they get punished. Imagine if you misconfigured a service and then had to pay out the fee for breaking your company’s reliability contract…

And to say the least, I doubt the officer has $800K.