Washington legislators are in charge of police training in our state, but they want to sue officers and cities, and not themselves, when this training lets the public down. Note these police officers can already be sued today if they are acting in bad faith.
To hear some state legislators complain about police officer training, you might never know that the legislature itself has been in charge of overseeing the training of these new officers for the past 50 years. Since 1974, every new officer gets 720 hours of training in the state police academy, overseen by the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission (WSCJTC). Cities pay them for this service. The training covers all the necessary basics, including what they need to know about criminal law and the state constitution, using tasers and firearms, chasing suspects, conducting traffic stops, and other necessary skills. Here is the syllabus. The WSCJTC also provides numerous specialty follow-on classes, in such varied areas as dog handling, accident reconstruction, and police supervision, so the WSCJTC maintains a lifetime role in training police officers. The WSCJTC reports directly to the governor and legislature, not to local mayors or city council members. So individual legislators only need to look in a mirror to see someone responsible for police training.
This month the legislature is focussed on developing a way that people can sue these police officers when police training proves inadequate– either because the training failed to cover a unique legal or crisis situation the officer found themself in, or because the training directed the officer to make a wrong decision. The new legislation, HB 1025, is artfully written to still preserve immunity from lawsuits for the State and the legislators, the ones overseeing the academy classes. Only the police-officer students and their employers will be sued when the state training turns out to be inadequate.
Can you imagine how you would feel if you learned that a college or school where you earned a degree was trying to get you sued because the education they gave you was inadequate? How angry would you be? That’s what the legislature is cooking up for our police officers.
Thanks to our tumultuous legislature, new legal dilemmas are presented to officers everyday. For example, should an officer run after a suspect that just sold a lethal dose of fentanyl to a 12-year-old? What happens if the suspect runs into traffic, and is killed? With drug-related criminal issues still unresolved, an officer would need to be an experienced trial lawyer to get every one of these questions right all the time. 720 hours of academy time and 24-hour annual follow-ups will not provide a blueprint for every situation. Right now, when society sends an officer into danger, the officer is expected to act in good faith in applying their judgement and their training to the most confusing situations. If the state feels our officers don’t have enough training to cover all situations, the state should improve the training– not look for ways to financial harm the officers’ families after damage is done. And if anyone feels the officers are acting in bad faith, the officers can already be sued.
In any large workforce there will statistically be a few employees that do bad things, and they need to be dealt with. Police departments are no exception. Officers can currently be reprimanded and demoted for lesser transgressions, and criminally charged for serious offences. Officers can already be sued today under RCW 9-46.212 when they act in bad faith or gross negligence. If the State wants to now sue someone for inadequately training police officers, they should start by suing themselves until they learn to take responsibility for their own work.
Cities do have responsibility to give at least 24 hours per year continuing training to officers, set a safe culture, and provide supervision. Renton far exceeds these expectations with our own dedicated training center employing techniques and culture taught by the WSCJTC as a guide, and enrolling promoted officers in continuing WSCJTC training at their academy campus. Cities also have an overall responsibility to remedy financial damages to other parties that their actions have caused, whether by the police, parks, transportation, or any city department. In Renton our insurance fund typically covers damages caused by police work without requiring a lawsuit from a resident to make it happen. I always advocated for a timely financial remedy and sincere apology to any parties inadvertently harmed by any of our departments.
Some further details are given below. Lawsuits brought under this new bill will be finger-pointing exercises, and when the fingers end up pointing to the state (who does the bulk of the training), all the court’s time and lawyers fees will have been wasted because the state will have immunity. (Remember, officers can already be sued for gross negligence and bad faith under existing law, and this proposed new law still gives immunity to the State Police Academy that is paid to train officers on the laws that apply to policing; this leaves only the officers and the City that paid for the training liable for deficiencies in the training)
NEW SECTION. Sec. 3. (1) Any person injured in person or property by a peace officer acting under color of authority has a cause of action against the peace officer,…
… if the peace officer engaged in conduct that is unlawful under: (a) The state Constitution; (b) RCW 10.93.160; or27 (c) RCW 10.120.020.28 29 [Author’s note: This is what is supposed to be taught by the State, and they’ve given themselves legal immunity if they fail to teach it thoroughly to new officers]. (2) In an action against a peace officer under subsection (1) of this section, the plaintiff may also name the officer’s employer as a defendant.
A peace officer has a defense against an action brought under subsection (1) of this section if, when the injury occurred, the officer substantially complied with a regulation, practice, procedure, policy, or training that was established by the peace officer’s employer or approved or condoned by superior officers
….. the peace officer’s employer is independently liable for the injury if the injury was proximately caused by a regulation, practice, procedure, policy, or training that was established by the employer or approved or condoned by superior officers.
Note that during the course of a stressful lawsuit, a police officer is given the opportunity to blame their employer if the officer can show that the incident exactly matched a textbook training example and the officer followed the training solution perfectly. Then the employer must accept responsibility for poor training, or enter a new phase of the lawsuit where they try to show its the fault of the State, which has conveniently given itself immunity and would not have to pay a settlement to the plaintiff.
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Are you suggesting that the legislative body actually take responsibility for its poor management and not really looking into cause and effect of a problem?
Yes, there was a “little” sarcasm in that last comment.
The legislature appears to be approaching it like this: “I sense we should have done a better job. But figuring out our mistakes would take some hard work, so instead of being proactive for the safety of the public, let’s just invite everybody hurt by our errors and omissions to all sue each other. We’ll just make sure they can’t sue us. After we find out who sues who, and for what, we’ll ask for a report, and we’ll know what to fix. It’s a perfect plan that takes no effort on our part.”
Someone on facebook asked about immunity of lawmakers. Legislators enjoy significant immunity under state and federal law. I’m not a lawyer and can’t recite all the laws that pertain, but this Cornell University article provides a succinct writeup on legislative immunity doctrine in the United States. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legislative_immunity?fbclid=IwAR3q0vyTcs-O0JWAjp5TcOl47y3Fwv8iKlFm-0kHzzIxAhkV2O0y2E8tECo#:~:text=Legislative%20immunity%20is%20granted%20to,clauses%20in%20their%20own%20constitutions
kinda of a good thing. nobody would serve otherwise
I’m afraid you are probably right about that, or at least the conscientious, thoughtful ones who are looking out for the security of their families would be reluctant to serve. And they would be getting sued all the time, whether deserved or not. Even though I essentially had this immunity as a member of city council, I never wanted to have a preventable death on my conscience, and I worked hard to carefully think through the unintended consequences of every decision we made. I wish more lawmakers thought the way I did. That’s why I’ve been writing so much about the legislature recently just ignoring automobile safety.
It’s good to hold police officers accountable for their actions, but it is disappointing to learn that the state legislature wants to do so by suing the officers themselves instead of taking responsibility for their inadequate training.
It is unfair to expect police officers to handle every situation perfectly, especially when the state fails to provide them with adequate training to deal with the complexities of modern policing.
This legislation is a finger-pointing exercise that will waste time and money while doing little to improve police training or accountability.
In general using the threat of lawsuits to try to change behavior in any public function is a legislative short-cut. People with no assets or responsibilities are unaffected by lawsuits, so they’ll continue bad behavior. In this case, they may be the only ones willing to accept police jobs. Conversely, people who are committed to supporting families, who are very responsible in all aspects of their lives, will protect their finances from lawsuits by carefully avoiding litigation risk when possible– these individuals will not be interested in being police officers. So this law is a great way to select reckless cowboy types to be our future police officers– another brilliant job by our state legislature, which seems collectively incapable of higher-level reasoning this year.