The fact that taxpayers and not the police themselves have to pay the settlement is the worst part of this. Every settlement against the police should be taken from their pension fund. This is something I've been advocating for decades now, because it creates an incentive not to do things like this. Right now, good cops don't patrol bad cops because it won't affect them. By aligning the incentives right, it will mean…
You'd need to have it either impact their pension payments in a way that cannot be backfilled or more directly force the police officers themselves to carry liability insurance (far better).
Of course tax dollars pay their salaries as well, but if an officer became uninsurable then it weeds them out eventually.