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Shouldn't a wrongfully convicted man be the responsibility of the DAs office, not the cops?

I can't believe they gave Sean Ellis $16 Million. He was guilty as sin. His girlfriend's prints were on the magazine. There are so many facts in that case that point to his guilt that had nothing to do with those cops being dirty.

Never thought about it but it does seem weird.

Other than paying for some vehicle damage because of potholes and shit what other city departments are put in the position where the city gets sued?

Seems like it should be 50/50 since the cops make arrests and put together the case.

Without having read the article (paywall), I assume the headline is just not thoughtfully written. Police and prosecutors together are considered “law enforcement.”

Negligence suits are also capped at $100K for the city but these police suits are not.

It’s still a huge sum of money. Just weird how it is framed.

But the DA isn’t part of the city. It’s the county which for most of Massachusetts, including Suffolk, was taken over by the state.

Glad my tax dollars are going to fund incompetent policing (and also shitty land management, zoning and so much more)

I'm saying when the police lose these suits it should come out of the pension fund. See how fast they clean up their act.

The other departments listed in the article with significant legal settlements/payouts during the time period other than police are:

Fire

Boston Public Schools

Public works

Public facilities Department

Transportation

Treasury

The only other department with a settlement/payout over $1 million during a single year is Boston Fire with a $3.31 million in 2020.

My guess it depends on why? Did the police fabricate or without evidence?

I believe this would include suits for employment issues, such as harassment or civil rights violations, etc.

As Yale Electric has on its Billboard Fund the Police Even More. They have a lot of lawsuits to pay off.

This is the only solution to our policing problems.
Having taxpayers (or shareholders in private sector) pay for the wrongdoing only encourages more wrongdoing.

If by "clean up their act" you mean "the police win a large state/federal lawsuit against the city easily", yes, that is what would happen.

I am no great advocate for the police, but these kinds of statements are incredibly dumb.

You may take the individual pension of an individual cop if you get a conviction for them committing a serious crime while on the job. That is basically it.

The pension fund is money the government has set aside (and employees may have contributed to) and invested to pay for the retirement benefits it has promised workers as part of their employment contracts. The pension fund exists to make it easier for the government to pay out the benefits it legally owes to individuals.

You can't go back and retroactively change the benefits that you promised someone, any more than your employer can go back and change how much it paid you last year.

Wipe out the entire pension fund....the only thing that changes, short of the city declaring bankruptcy, is that Boston taxes are about to skyrocket - Boston's still legally obligated to pay out those benefits and now there's no financial cushion for it. This is also why when the market is doing terribly you'll see officials start adjusting budgets to make larger payments into the pension system - Boston is on the hook for those benefits whether the market performs as expected or not.

If your company were to be sued for something you had no involvement in would you like it deducted from your pension fund as well or?

Not if when it's setup, or renegotiated that "payments made to settle legitimate claims against the BPD bla bla bla are paid from the BPD pension pool." It's all about the contract. Obviously you can't just unilaterally decide to do it now, but to OPs point, if it was setup that way in the beginning, I'd bet police would think twice before stitching people up.

To put things in perspective, the city budget is $4 billion. Without this one-time wrongful conviction that's about a third of a percent. Not saying there isn't work to do but numbers need context.

I agree with you in principal but in the Ellis case the cops were filthy

FTP

Cops make the arrest but the DA is the one who puts together the case.

I mean, sure. But why even bother arguing that if it’s not at all possible.

Depends on the context and why they were wrongfully convicted.

Are the police now considered a business?

This might just be semantics, but the cops “put together the case” by gathering enough evidence and probable cause to arrest someone. The DA then signs off on it and prosecutes the case.

Yes its a business the entire city is with employees, health care plans, schedules, supervisors, the whole ball of wax oh and a pension plan for its employees.

individual police officers should be licenced. The state should cover liability for baseline bad work like shoddy policework but cap coverage to like $1M. Officers should individually be on the hook for anything over $1M. Insurance cost for 99% of officers should be really cheap since they don't have super high risk, similar to life insurance premiums for young people. Bad officers would never be able afford their >$1M coverage. The

I have an idea. We actually start taking the amount Boston residents have to pay for these settlements out of the BPD contract renewals. Obviously it wouldn't come as a pay cut (god forbid) but this way they see how much more they WOULD have gotten, if not for the bad apples.

Well I don't kill people for money so it's kind of a moot point isn't it

In the case of Sean Ellis, police corruption was a HUGE part of why it played out the way it did. That shit had witness intimidation, planted evidence, all sorts of bad cop shit.

A. No union in their right mind would agree to such asinine terms. B. The police dont have their own individual pension fund they contribute to the same fund as other city employees.

Nonsense smoke screen aside just answer the question. if your employer was sued would you be ok with the settlement money to come out of your pension/401K?

its not a nonsense smokescreen actually its getting at the heart of the problem here. my company disposes of hazardous material, if i pulled a BPD and just dumped it in some guys backyard giving that entire family various diseases then i would not expect the tax payers to cover for me. luckily for new england residents hazardous materials have tons of regulations and oversight, unlike the police.

Depends on if the cop manufactured the testimony. Yes they could have colluded to create false testimony but the DA likely has CYA.

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Fair enough. I was looking at it more in terms of actually compiling and putting together the case that they will present to the judge and jury.

Its definitely a nonsense smokescreen. BPD’s job is not to kill people as you stated. An astronomically low percentage of the time it happens and an astronomically high amount of time it is justified. The police also do have oversight. How’s this you even elect the people who oversee them. But again getting back to the core of the question…if some other folks at your company are illegally dumping somewhere and the EPA fines your company a million dollars . You’d be ok with paying the fines out of your pension/401K correct?

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Like two separate, yet equally oppressive groups?

What do you think about the context the bar graph of each city department’s payout/settlement gives?

I thing that really highlights the issue, each year BPD accounts for a majority of payouts, 2/3 years it’s the vast majority of the total city’s payout/settlement.

BUM BUM

And the police wonder why we are afraid of them. I heard this in Mexico, when you are in trouble you can run to the police or back to trouble. Run back to trouble

The pension fund can be $0.00, the amount of money Boston owes it's retirees has not changed.

Beyond that, I doubt there is any scheme you can come up with to try to implement what you're dreaming of that would pass a court. An employee signing a contract doesn't make illegal provisions valid.

There's a lot you can't do with compensation, and "taking money you've already paid away from one worker because of the actions of another" is usually right up at the top of that list, no matter how you want to phrase it.

As a basic example: Employee 1 crashes a company truck. Maybe he runs some people over in the process. Company is out $1m. Can the company come back and say to the other employees + former employees with retirement accounts "we're going to need each of you to return $10,000 from what we've paid you in the past to pay for it?" - obviously not, it's the company's problem. If they've got a strong enough case they can maybe sue Employee 1 for negligence although that probably won't come up with $1m.

But nothing they can write into their employment contract can force people who had nothing to do with it to pay for the company's problem.

The city of Boston is the "company" here.

Do you own property and pay property tax in Boston? I'm gonna say you don't so you ain't contributing crap

The police should be forced to pay these out of their own operating budget. Commit a beating? Guess you guys aren’t getting new batons this year then cause the budget for that is going to the payout

Maybe cut them off from it entirely then. Pensions are for people who deserve them

These are their stories

Every working American deserves a pension/retirement you are just talking nonsense suggesting cutting them off.

DA chooses what cases and what charges to pursue

Sean Ellis was 100% involved in that murder in some way