How can civil liability be reduced




















Get your copy today. More info. Law Enforcement Over 3, law enforcement agencies across the United States use PowerDMS to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and promote accountability. Learn More. Healthcare Healthcare facilities across the nation use PowerDMS to achieve everyday survey readiness and to deliver safe, quality services. Featured Resources. Blog An extensive library of policy management resources, at your fingertips. Read More. Download Now. Take a Tour Get Demo. Start Tour. Article highlights Six layers of liability avoidance.

How you can strengthen all layers of liability avoidance in your agency. This reduces liability by making sure every officer knows proper procedure. Corrective Action In order for policy, training, and supervision to have teeth, your department must take steps to discipline officers if they misbehave.

This can help reduce liability from both internal and external lawsuits. At the same time, officers must know they will be treated fairly if they make an honest mistake. In order to do so, you may find it helpful to review performance-related data including: Incident reports Civilian complaints Performance reviews Lawsuits Use of force and injury patterns Changes in case law New research, best practices, or literature related to policing Analyzing this data can strengthen your liability avoidance by helping you proactively improve practices.

Legal Support, Counsel, and Training Law enforcement officers must know the laws they are enforcing. However, this is often the weakest layer in law enforcement liability avoidance. The training should emphasize how new laws affect how officers do their jobs. Using PowerDMS can help you strengthen all six layers of liability avoidance in your agency. You can highlight policy changes and send them out to employees with the click of a button. Why it is important to review policies and procedures.

What is a policy vs. Thus, City of Canton v. Harris stands for the proposition that a municipality is liable only when the failure to train is a deliberate choice on the part of the city. For example, in Connick v. Thompson , U. Proper supervision is another risk management technique that law enforcement agencies can employ to limit their civil liability.

In Shehee v. Luttrell , F. Three risk management techniques designed to limit exposure to civil lawsuits are proper policy development, adequate training programs designed to address recurring tasks that may result in harm to another, and ensuring proper supervision of employees. Policies govern the mission, define core values and provide direction for the agency and its employees.

Training ensures that officers understand policies and procedures, establish competency with those policies, procedures and accepted professional standards. Training programs must be developed in areas where there is a patently obvious need for training, such as use of force, traffic stops and searches and seizures.

Finally, appropriate supervision is a necessary risk management technique that provides the oversight and accountability needed to ensure that officers are adhering to agency policies, practicing accepted law enforcement standards and receive the training necessary to fulfill the mission to protect and serve the community.

All Content. Risk management in policing is both a leadership and management issue. Proper adaptation requires that a police agency promote and foster a culture that encourages and expects all personnel to be fully engaged in risk management. Most law enforcement agencies already apply elements of risk management in their operations to limit their personnel and the public from exposure to common risks. If police organizations are seeking improvement, spotting issues before they surface, understanding the risks, and constantly learning, then perhaps performance metrics ought to not seek the low-hanging fruit of job duties like arrests and citations, but rather the ways in which personnel accomplish those duties.

Police officers face an unknown volume of complex situations on a daily basis. The nature, speed, and magnitude of police work on any given day cannot be known. The proper personal and professional development of all employees provides an opportunity not only to enhance the organization beyond the technical skills its staff possesses, but also to provide an avenue for building great organizational values and cultures that will ultimately lead to less human error.

Another important part of human behavior that affects officer and organizational success is the subgroups people naturally fall into within organizational life. All organizations have varying levels of employee clarity of the vision an organization is seeking to deliver. There are those employees who are trailblazers, who make every effort to deliver what is being asked.

There are those employees who build the necessary action plans for visions to become a reality. There are also those employees who intentionally lag behind, resisting any significant movement of an organization. Finally, there are those employees who sit on the fence and watch to see how everyone within the organization is treated. The latter group represents a significant number of people in an organization who all watch the trailblazers encounter the same fate: as they work hard, the reward is more work.

With so much organizational pressure on overachievers, police organizations put these employees on a path toward burnout or shortcuts, which can have devastating customer service effects on them and the organization. More importantly, police organizations lose the ability to harness the fence sitters who watch the trailblazers get overworked.



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