12/31/2023 0 Comments Benchmark analytics sign in![]() ![]() They can choose to individually find private insurance, or join a municipal risk pool - a non-profit joint org that charges premiums, handles cases, and returns dividends if premiums were higher than needed to pay settlements. Small cities don’t have the luxury of deep pockets or hot-potato bond issuances, and need to procure liability insurance. In 2018, costs were underestimated by 500%! The shortfalls required ad hoc bond issuances, which burden taxpayers even further with interest over time. Chicago has underallocated budget for misconduct settlements every year for over a decade. At least, that is what is expected of them. Big cities, like those listed above, are large enough to self-insure, to plan for some amount of settlements every year. Looking at who pays through the $$$ lens reveals a muscle in public safety that I wasn’t aware of before: insurance. Let’s get into how the finances are structured, and why. There’s significant value to be captured by a company that can minimize litigable action. The per user per month numbers we outlined are similar to large tech initiatives like outfitting a department with bodyworn cameras or building a real-time crime center. This is good news, because it means that even addressing just the most egregious police misconduct incidents, skimming off the top, Benchmark can save communities from significant harm - and therefore, the most expensive settlements. First, these civil lawsuits follow a Pareto distribution, where a small number of serious cases make up an outsized percentage of total settlement dollars. “In FY 2018, five wrongful conviction claims, representing less than one percent of the 3,745 NYPD tort claims resolved during FY 2018, settled for a total of $33.3 million, which accounted for 14% of the total $229.8 million in NYPD payouts.” “A small number of New York Police Department (NYPD) claims disproportionately accounted for the total dollar amount paid out on NYPD claims in FY 2018.” “To transform police force management through an all-in-one police force management system and early intervention software platform that provides a 360° holistic view of every officer - in police departments of every size.” How Big is the Problem? Then Benchmark adds several personnel management tools that aim to align the company with the goals of high-performing officers in their training and career development.īenchmark Analytics’ mission, in their own words: ![]() Benchmark believes they have the best medici- err, software to identify actors that increase the riskiness of incidents with neighbors. Stretching the metaphor to the breaking point now, Benchmark Analytics and other early intervention systems (EIS) are autoimmune suppressants. Overreacting to these cells disables our ability to manage blood glucose levels, which causes a host of health issues that require speedy intervention or we can die. In type 1 diabetes, for example, one kind of white blood cell called T lymphocytes targets insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, believing them to be dangerous. ![]() I’ve been watching a lot of Cells at Work on Netflix, so forgive the metaphor - police misconduct is a lot like an autoimmune disease, where the body’s immune system (police) fails to differentiate between harmful invaders (some viruses, bacteria, and crime) and native, important cells (neighbors). At a community level, this is self-inflicted pain: money raised by neighbors being paid out to affected, injured, and in the worst cases, grieving, neighbors. We foot the bill when public safety agencies, committed to protecting us, harm us. The other side of the same coin is the third layer, which is that this is taxpayer money. Second, the agency or municipality must pay out significant amounts of money in lawsuits to complainants, which can have a dramatic effect on operations. The distance makes it difficult for an agency to recruit, to communicate effectively to the community, and to be proactive in areas that require buy-in from the public. First, misconduct stretches the empathetic distance between the community and the agency. ![]() There are three layers to the harm caused by police misconduct. Long version: Community trust (the number two most important narrative in policing, according to IACP training sessions) erodes when sworn officers take actions that neighbors consider unjustified. Short version: We believe that we can repair community trust and reduce lawsuits against police by identifying risk-prone officers before they get off track. ![]()
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