Federal judge rules Texas city must pay homeowner $60,000 for SWAT team damage that left home uninhabitable
Five years after police destroyed cancer survivor Vicki Baker’s house while pursuing a fugitive, a federal judge has ruled that the Texas city she used to call home must pay her for the damage.
… her insurance company refused to cover the bulk of the damage because her policy — like most — excludes damage caused by the government.
Baker tried to file a property damage claim with the city of McKinney, but officials refused to pay, citing qualified immunity, a doctrine often used to shield police and other government agencies from being sued for violating people’s rights or destroying property during the course of their work.
I do not begrudge police from doing what they have to do to conduct their operations. But I would fully expect the government to make things right for non-criminals harmed in the process. Taking a criminal out of circulation is to my benefit. To everyone’s benefit. One person absorbing damage for the sake of all of us is not right.
In this case, either the city or the police department directly needed to make the homeowner whole. It shouldn’t have taken multiple layers of court battles for that to happen.
(Special note: Had this home been owned by the kidnapper, or even just a family member, I would be saying "Tough ■■■■ " on compensation.)
I can understand if this might cause police to hold back on some maneuver that could be damaging to non-perp property. (They already do for non-perp bystanders. Or they should.) I wouldn’t want them to have to hold back because of this.
I don’t have a solution for that. While I don’t want them to hold back, I understand why they might.
I don’t know… Maybe some kind of catastrophic insurance policy to cover things. This case was $60,000 total. (And from the description of the damage, I’m surprised it’s that low.) When it comes to many municipalities, 60K is a rounding error. But, for example, what if this action had burned down a whole strip mall?
City should be on the hook, but could most cities survive some multi-million (billion?) unexpected loss?
Some smaller and mid level cities do buy insurance for these things. Larger cities make it part of their budget.
It is also an actuarial calculation by cities. Qualified immunity often protects them enough that they rarely have to pay out. Property damage can be big but an average isn’t and oftentimes property insurance could kick in. Here the payout was (as you said) pretty small and that is often the more likely outcome
So buy insurance or sell bonds or make it part of budget along with salaries paid to city lawyers to defend these actions
So outcome 1 - pay nothing due to home insurance or to qualified immunity and know that many lawyers won’t even bother taking the case especially if they know their jurisdiction protects the municipality via court decision or tie the damage sustained isn’t enough for them to collect small contingencies after years of litigation
Outcome 2 - (much less likely but i can’t get into percentages) pay a smallish amount
Outcome 3 - very very rare - may be buy insurance for this as you said - once every few years pay an above six figure payment
