The police don't care what the taxpayers have to shell out, it just means sitting through some angry lectures but basically they are no worse. I think compensation for victims of police misconduct should come out of police pensions.

If police officers are liable to pay the victims, would anyone want to be a police officer, given their relatively low wages? In order to make them liable for such things, you would have to increase their wages a lot. I think one of the problems is that we expect a lot from the police, which we should, but then they are not paid nearly enough for that level of responsibility.

Conversely, why would I want anyone to be a police officer that had a problem with this? True, a police officer could be innocent and run into some problems anyway - which is the situation faced by everyone else. I'd certainly be in favor of raising pay if it attracted a higher calibre of applicant, but the pay shouldn't be so high that it becomes economically attractive to take risks with others' life and liberty.

Lots of police officers are reasonable people trying to do a difficult job with integrity. but the job also attracts a lot of bad people who exploit their authority abuse or kill people, and there are types of politician and voter who support that kind of behavior and choose to advance it.

More importantly I'd want the responsible police officers to come out public in newspapers and tv with a c l e a r message that they have harmed an innocent man.

It doesn't need to be devastating to them but it needs to be clear and maybe it should intentionally be a bit embarrassing to them.

Still needs to be careful though as we don't want police to stop important investigations to avoid public shaming; we only want them to be very careful before going public in either way with such a case.