Is this a joke? You need to be pointed to evidence of a systematic problem with excessive and illegal violence by law enforcement?
So what? That’s an argument that the people who shared these photos should be fired, which I have no problem with. Not for a $28 million payment from taxpayers to people who have as yet suffered no significant harm.
I didn’t say violence, and I didn’t say law enforcement. I specifically said murder and Minneapolis PD: a specific department and a specific crime, which the people in charge immediately recognized as a crime. Are you arguing that MPD’s top cops knew of other murders, recognized that evidence of those murders existed, and chose to ignore the issue?
Meanwhile, the evidence proffered says that LASO’s top cops knew of other “ghoul books,” recognized that evidence of those ghoul books existed, and chose to ignore them.
Two points:
How do you get the attention of the people in charge of determining who gets fired? Answer: lawsuits.
What makes you think the Bryant family has not already suffered emotional harm just from knowing those photos are out there, that people used photographs of their dead loved ones as entertainment? Those photos could still exist; on any given day, they might resurface, and because people know the name Kobe Bryant, if they do resurface they’ll be splashed across social media. Every time you check your Facebook account, you might get to see your daughter’s lifeless and burned body. Worrying about that shouldn’t cause any emotional harm, in your estimation?
You carefully tried to make it incredibly specific to evade the point. But there is clearly a systemic problem, and a large punitive settlement for any PD’s excessive violence is a deterrent to to all PDs for all violence.
I’m not arguing against lawsuits. I’m arguing that lawsuits should result in punitive settlements that are proportionate to the seriousness of the bad act that we seek to deter.
I did not claim that they have suffered no harm. But the emotional harm from imagining seeing photos that you have not actually seen is rather less than the harm of being actually murdered, don’t you think?
It’s hard to do that. A jury is told to do that, but every jury will view every act a little differently. You can’t tell the jury, “consider how much a person might have recovered if their husband was murdered by a police officer and adjust your award accordingly.” You have to simply tell them that “their award should be sufficient to serve the purpose of punish and deterrence.” Naturally, you’ll get all kinds of awards, some that seem too high, and some that see too low. It’s very hard to predict, and impossible to achieve proportionality across cases with different facts, jurisdictions and jurors.
Here’s part of the Ninth Circuit’s pattern instruction (bold added)
If you find that punitive damages are appropriate, you must use reason in setting the amount. Punitive damages, if any, should be in an amount sufficient to fulfill their purposes but should not reflect bias, prejudice, or sympathy toward any party. In considering the amount of any punitive damages, consider the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant’s conduct [, including whether the conduct that harmed the plaintiff was particularly reprehensible because it also caused actual harm or posed a substantial risk of harm to people who are not parties to this case. You may not, however, set the amount of any punitive damages in order to punish the defendant for harm to anyone other than the plaintiff in this case].
As one of the taxpayers whose taxes are being used to pay this settlement, I don’t have a problem with it. And I expect enough L.A. voters feel the same way that it won’t be a political issue.
I also think that discussions of “who was harmed more” are fruitless.
Do you really think it’s hard to determine whether the police officers who murdered George Floyd acted more reprehensibly that the first responders who shared photos of Kobe Bryant? We’re not talking about fine gradations here, we’re talking about orders of magnitude.
There seems to be an is/ought disconnect here. You’re basically agreeing with me that the system is horribly inconsistent. I’m saying we should do better.
Well, I guess George Floyd probably doesn’t care much at this point either.
I’m just saying it’s hard to accomplish in practice. The Supreme Court agrees with you, but they are approaching it by limiting punitive damages to a ratio of actual damages. It’s really complicated, but the bright line rule is punitive damages cannot exceed actual damages by more than 9 to 1. For some cases the limit is 4 to 1. And for federal maritime cases, it’s a one to one ratio. (yes, they just made this shit up)
The additional problem with this approach is there is no set standard for noneconomic damages like emotional distress. One jury might award $500,000 and another might award $5,000,000 on the exact same facts. When you say punitives can be 4 times that, you’ve got quite a spread. And you change the facts a bit, and all bets are off.