I disagree.The city should pay dearly when cops violate peoples rights.Wrongful convictions generally don't get payouts as big a police abuse cases.
It's hard to justify that the police did millions of dollars worth of damages to the victims. 5 figures seems more appropriate to be honest. I think the police should be held criminally accountable though.
I would agree with lower settlements if police were fired immediately after incidents like this,but since they never are thats why I support high payouts.
The damages are meant to be punitive. If the State has to be millions, they are going to be sure to make sure it does not happen again. If you make them pay out something small, then they usually make some hand waving like they are going to fix and leave the same shit in place. If Cops are not punished for when they fuck up royally, why should they get better a their job? We hand them a license to kill and violate Constitutional rights, they should be held to a much higher standard instead of allowing idiots in so easily.
Remember, it's the citizens of LA county or state of CA paying the bill, not the police officers themselves. In contrast, I wouldn't complain if that guy in NC got $4.4 million. 100k year for being locked up seems reasonable. At a minimum he should get $2.2 million. It's a disgrace that there's a 15 year cutoff.
It is not just about millions of dollars of damages to the victim. You have to read what Compensatory and Punitive damages are. If a cop walks up to me and punches me across the face for no reason and I suffer $2500 in hospital bills, making the city pay $2500 in damages does nothing. If the cop is not punished or fired then the State is NOW responsible for the behavior of its employees and needs to pay. Just takes one big settlement and things get fixed real fast.... except in the case of police it seems. States and cities never learn. Watch Minnesota and see if they learn anything after the Floyd settlement.
Please tell me you did not say that after you thought about it? Do you know how our justice system works? So judges should be biased and not apply justice when the government is involved where the state commits a crime or breaks the law.... got it. I dont want to live in your justice system, or as others call it... Russia...China.
The system isn't designed for the judge to give punitive punishments against the state is my point. Generally people don't bite the hand that feeds them.