UnderRight

When a law enforcement agency or officer violates a person’s civil rights, there are limited options for recourse. Given constraints ranging from qualified immunity for individual officers to the collective power of a police union, civil courts are one of few avenues for justice for victims of police misconduct. The community swallows a bittersweet pill when, for instance, the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Laquan MacDonald are awarded multi-million dollar settlements. While compensation is assuredly owed to the grieving families, a better justice system would be one in which these individuals are alive and not trending as the latest hashtag.

Of the many questions raised by these settlements, some receive surprisingly scant attention: who pays for those sums - and - could that possibly be spent on the front end to prevent such tragedies? The answer, more often than not, some fort of insurance provider. There are nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies and coverage is typically provided by either a commercial carrier, a governmental risk pool, or a reinsurance policy with a high deductible. After decades of the practice, the pattern is unmistakably clear: as payments go up, misconduct continues and the police-community relationship further deteriorates.

UnderRight operates with the theory that greater transparency begets greater accountability. In the case of law enforcement liability insurance, there is little public knowledge of the practice in general and far greater mystery as to the particular underwriters. By shining light on these relationships, UnderRight will facilitate a larger discussion about standards of service, trust, public safety, and accountability.

UnderRight employs three mutually reinforcing programmatic areas to achieve its theory of change: research, outreach, and advocacy. The first phase involves collecting information about policies for every law enforcement agency in the country. UnderRight will reach out and build relationships, seeking to better understand the perspectives of impacted communities, law enforcement, and insurance underwriters. UnderRight will use its research and outreach to lead and support select advocacy campaigns, working at the local, state, or federal level for legislation and launch campaigns to alter insurance company actions, when and where appropriate.

The invitation to apply for the Unbundle Policing incubator was the spur I needed to put an inchoate idea into ink. I have taken advantage of the incubator and these past few months to assess the landscape and speak with academics, legal experts, members of the impacted community, fellow Solvers, and industry experts. I now have a well-defined solution, a better understanding of how it fits into the larger space, and a plan for its realization. 

All of the research and conversations have made it unmistakably clear my solution is a great resource that fills a larger need. What remains to be seen are the circumstances where it will be used, the effects of its implementation, and how the dominoes as they relate to police misconduct and its (lack of) consequences fall with a new front for advocacy emerging. It is time for UnderRight to make its presence known.