Great idea, Except that this will never happen because public sector unions are important voting blocks. Public sector unions should be abolished (don’t have a problem with unions) but the conflict of interest is just too great.

Great point. Obviously can't expect them to vote against their own interests, because higher standards, higher accountability, and higher transparency will always be against those interests.

> These dialogs always prompt me to chime in with my solution: make the police be self-insured, backed by their pension fund.

I'm curious, what exactly do you mean by "self-insured"?

(Is the idea to combine literal insurance underwriting for retirement planning with a monetary incentive system for ongoing work performance)?

They mean that penalties and restitutions for wrongful prosecutions and wrongful convictions should not come from taxpayer money but private insurance. Right now, police departments feel zero pain from judgements against them so they have no reason to structurally correct their behaviour.

Police in some states are actually self-insured, though not backed by a pension fund.