but who is the arbiter of that? Lost civil court case settlements?

It would be up to the insurance companies to decide which cops are high risk, using any data they can scrape together.

Lost civil court case settlements would be a huge one, of course. Any cop found liable in civil court for abuse of power/violation of civil rights/etc would quickly see their malpractice insurance rates skyrocket ... or have insurance companies start refusing to cover him altogether.

But they'd probably also factor in accusations and complaints, department disciplinary measures (if public), maybe even things like age and gender of the cop (since they change auto insurance rates based on that). They might also have some kind of questionnaire/psychological assessment during their application process. Maybe they'll even browse through the cop's social media for any red flags that are associated with a high likelihood of civil court cases. Oh, and also consider the record of the department they're working in, of course -- since the data shows cops working in problem departments are more likely to end up having civil court case judgements/settlements.

The beautiful part of it is that all of this would be done without spending taxpayer money on it, and the insurance companies would be highly resistant to police corruption/coercion because insuring high-risk officers and paying civil court penalties for them would cut into profits. They have a high profit incentive to make sure they correctly identify high risk cops and don't let any slip through the cracks.

Yeah, Mother Jones is a highly reputable source

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/police-losing-jobs-flock-cameras-alprs/