Why do the people (through their representatives) pay for the police officers' transgressions against the people?

Question

The practice sounds a bit counter intuitive (to me) and I'd like to know if there is a logic behind it and what that logic is.
I understand paying for their services. What I don't understand is paying when they are acting outside the law (as in murder, rape, torture, illegal detention. Things that are illegal for both civilians and police officers)
The way I see it (from my narrow point of view) is like paying (money) for a dangerous job like cutting a tree. If the guy drops branches on my house and damages it, he (or his insurance) will be paying for the damages not me, no matter how dangerous the job is.
To clarify what I mean by "paying for police officers' transgressions", it's money paid by the government (from people's budget) in case of a successful lawsuit if an officer has mistreated (illegally) a civilian.

Edit:
I am not trying to have a debate about whether the police officers are or are not guilty in certain cases. I am asking about the few cases where they are clearly breaking the laws and their own department's code of conduct. Cases where courts and juries find them guilty.
I don't know why I get answers about how cops are right and their victims are wrong, or how cops have the right to be wrong. The question is strictly about the source of the payment made to the victims

Answer 1

Because law enforcement is working on behalf of the government, at the government (and by extension, the people who pay for the government)'s request. And law enforcement is given a large measure of leeway on judgment because of the complexities and danger of the job. So rather than remove judgment from the police's mandate entirely (which would cost a whole crapload and may not even be possible), they pay the victims when the cop gets it wrong and file a grievance with the police union. It is by no means a great solution, but we haven't yet found a better one that people are willing to pay for.

Answer 2

You are mixing up two different situations:

1. An honest mistake of a police officer. He hears someone shoutting inside a house, fears a crime is happenning, and busts open the door.

   In the branch trimming example, the guy trimming the tree takes reasonable steps to ensure that your house is not damaged, but nonetheless a branch hits your house (mistakes do happen).

2. A criminal action by a police officer. Someone has pissed him office so he breaks his door under the cover of his badge.

   Or, for criminally negligency, your tree trimmer begins working while drunk and does not secure the branches he is cutting, even if they are right over your house.

In both of these cases, the owner of the house may be entitled to damages to repair the door, and possible emotional issues.

In 1), it is in the state interest to foot the bill. If you want a police officer to act, you do not want him to ask himself if he can pay for the door if it happens that it is all a mistake.

In 2), it is usually the police officer who is condemned to pay for the damages. But, if the police officer cannot foot the bill, then somebody should pay your door. And the police officer was acting under the cover of his badge and uniform, that were provided by a state which failed to control him. That makes the state liable secondarily, to pay up the portion the officer cannot.

Additionally in 2), there may be a criminal case/internal investigation against the police officer, which may lead to the officer being reprimanded, aparted (temporalily of permanently) from the service, forced to pay a fine (which is different from damages) or even to serve jail time. That would fall completely on the officer's shoulders.

Of course, IRL this is compounded by the apparent resistance to raise criminal charges against police officers, which means that often these situations are considered under the assumption that they were honest mistakes and so only the damages¹ part is covered. The heads of the PD and the responsable politicians may find paying the damages cheaper than going after the police officer just to get an small amount of money out of him and having to pay for the difference.

---

¹ Also take into account that reporting might be biased: a news about a millionaire indemnity may get more coverage than the news that police officer was jailed because of an incident that happened a couple of years ago. In general statistics are better than personal impressions.

² In terms of less media exposure, less internal tensions within the PD.

Answer 3

1. Responsibility.

   We the people vote in the people in government... who in turn both decide who to hire for police; as well as how to govern and train and meta-police said police.

   As such, "we the people" are where the buck ultimately stops. Literally, in case of this question.

2. Incentives.

   The idea (sadly, not very effective) is that if enough taxpayer money is wasted on payouts for the police, then voters will be unhappy with governance and either pressure the government to improve policing, OR, elect someone else.

   (see NYC electing Giuliani to clean up crime).

3. Insurance

   Police misconduct isn't necessarily an endemic problem. As such, it may very well be the most economically sounds solution to simply pay for the consequences of a few bad apples, rather than pay for ensuring there's no bad apples at all (which is near impossible in general, including in police).

Answer 4

If you were to employ a company to trim your trees, and one of their employees screws up, you will normally be compensated from the company, directly or indirectly. If you were to employ a police force to keep order, and one of their employees screws up, you would therefore expect to be compensated from the police force (or whoever is responsible for the police force).

If you were hiring one person, not part of a company, then the person would of course be liable. If you were hassled unjustly by one person not part of a police force, then that person would be liable. (Superhero comics tend to gloss over this point.) However, we invest police powers only in people who work for a police force.

Answer 5

Many things about how Policing works make much more sense if you assume they exist to:

1. Protect property rights

2. Maintain a state monopoly on force

3. Enforce in-group norms against out-groups

4. Enforce contrabrand rules

in roughly that order. Under this model, your "rights" are marketing mechanisms to encourage the populance to consent to the occupying professional police force, and Police stomping on "rights" is just a cost of doing their job.

Governments could hire and train Police that don't stomp on peoples "rights" nearly as much, but it would be expensive, require a different kind of recruit, and might get in the way of the above priorities.

It is cheaper and easier to just pay out some money to things that look bad enough in the media "rights" wise to keep the population from objecting too much.