Abrahams incident raises city's insurance bill
Excerpts from the Yolo Sun story entitled "Death of Ricardo Abrahams Causes Massive Rise in Woodland’s Liability Insurance Premium"
Woodland’s annual municipal-liability, insurance premium rose from $418,000 to $640,000 for the upcoming fiscal year — a $222,000 increase — due a single incident involving 44 year-old Ricardo Abrahams, whose welfare was allegedly of concern to four Woodland police officers involved in his death.
This basic proportion of premium increase for the city will remain in effect for three years — adding a total of about $666,000 in red ink — to Woodland’s several years of budget deficits.
Two years ago, Woodland’s annual liability-insurance premium was only about $300,000.
Jeff Tonks, CEO of YCPARMIA, describes that — “there’s an element of experience” — within the formula for determining premium amounts within the various jurisdictions participating in this self-insurance system. “Too adverse a [litigation] history, has an adverse affect on [that member’s] premium.”
Tonks expressed that the incident involving the death of Abrahams was the factor responsible for the huge jump in Woodland’s liability premium.
Inquiry to the City Manager regarding budgetary savings created by the difference between projected and actual expenses for liability and workers compensation insurance — roughly $216,000 — resulted in Mark Deven’s (regularly) timely response:
“Any savings realized due to premiums being lower than originally estimated could be used to offset the [anticipated] deficit in the benefits internal service fund — which receives its funding based on a flat-rate allocation to departments per employee. We were concerned that [this] would be under-budgeted,” because of the number of voluntary early retirements provoked in an effort to navigate the city’s budget.
Read more at the Yolo Sun.
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17 comments:
Who's insurance will go up for the shooting on Gum?
Thank you Dino and Yolosun. I like this the best: "When Abrahams (armed only with a pencil, according to some accounts of this incident) displayed behavior which might reasonably be expected of persons with mental instability / illness — and failed to obey some police instructions — he was shot with four separate taser weapons, ultimately being physically subdued and restrained by these four police officers — who suffocated him in the process."
I just had to chuckle (not really). So he didn't die from the tazers. He died from suffocation. What, were the cops just sitting on him?
11:39
I was not there and did not investigate this story. Bobby Harris also wrote: "No allegation of unlawful conduct by Abrahams has been made during the course of local police investigation, as well as an investigation by the state Attorney General — which also found that no criminal violations occurred — on the part of these four officers."
I know, all in the line of duty...
But, if no criminal violations, then why the increase in premiums?
The guy from YCPARMIA explained that to Bobby:
“One or two bad claims can greatly skew an entity’s relative position [within YCPARMIA].”
“Where you have a death case, [ ] the fluctuating dynamic of this history element becomes very negative,” Tonks emphasizes.
Kinda like the FEMA Flood Zone maps using the wrong computer model that actually has watershed going to Berryessa not down Cache Creek, it'll take two years to sort that "cluster-fluck" out, but in the mean time pay your outrageous premiums(taxes) to FEMA for those Louisiana Lap dances, Gucci Bags, and moldy trailers for Katrina....
Insurance premiums are based on many pieces of data, but one of those is monitary reserves. Reserves are needed by an insurance company to meet there risks they have on the books. This is regulated by the Cal. Department of Insurance. The company must have enough money collected to pay for losses. The money comes from premiums and company investments. Past risk history is also one of the pieces they are concerned with. So if you had an incident in the past such as this one, it will be considered into the renewal premium amount. This would cause the increase they have seen. It is normal for this increase to remain for 3 years. This is also a self insured program.
Abrahams was white. He has no rights. Only the brown man deserves justice.
Tax me more:
No. This issue is not like FEMA maps, however you interpret them... or misinterpret them, I should say.
On one side of the fence the "makers"....on the other side of the fence the "takers". Doesn't matter who the players are it's the same script. Taxpayers get stuck with the bill eventually no matter how much lipstick you put on the sow.
If we did not pay taxes we would not survive. Taxes are what make this country great. No taxes = chaos.
Taxes are NOT what makes this country great. It is the FREEDOMS we enjoy. We want the taxes collected to be spent wisely. We are getting a lot of examples where this is NOT happening.
If the incident like Abraham's causes us to pay more in taxes, we must insist that such incidents be prevented in the future.
Has Mr. Deven worked with Chief Sullivan to make sure his officers practice extreme caution when choosing the tazer? These tazers are slightly less "deadly force" than a bullet. I see bad examples of tazer use all over this country. It is not just a Woodland phenominum.
The police were called to perform a welfare check on Mr Abraham. Something went WAY wrong along the way. Four tazers were deployed. Somehow Mr. Abraham survived those shocks. He was suffocated after the tazers.
The actions and choices made by these four officers now have long lasting and expensive consequences for the rest of us.
The Firefighters could have been called in to "hose" him down, it stops rioters, I am sure a wet, soggy mental patient would have given up the fight after being knocked on his keister by a fire hose. I'm sure the "shot-in-the-back" guy would have preferred a road side shower as opposed to being ventilated by Yolo County's Finest.
tax me more- sure Fire dept hoses him down, he gets knocked to the ground, cracks his head open then sues, or gets knocked into traffic and hit by a car. How about this; obey the law, act responsibly and there won't be a need for such a response, maybe if Abrahams had been in a mental hospital or with his family he would not have been out concern.
and I don't know about you but if someone pulls a knife on me I am not calling the fire department so they can spray him with water. Maybe when someone breaks into your house you can spary them with your water hose.
Do I give him his Miranda Rights before I ventilate him or just shoot and get it over with? I know the "terrorist" will be getting their Miranda rights under the Obama Administration. Kewl eh?
Maybe the YCSO & WPD can just roll out at midnight like the Ferdinand Marcos regime did in the Phillipines, with the 50 caliber machine guns on the jeeps and anyone caught on the streets will be shot.....dead. Then bring in the fire hoses to wash the innards off the street.
Al a law enforcement officer, the two most common comments people make to me, in this order are: 1) I could never do your job, then: 2) This is how you should do your job. Just like all of the use of force cases, I'd like to see anyone who criticizes a cop take on a two or three hundred pound crazy person. They don't respond to pain, at all and they generally want to hurt someone. I'd like to see most of the critics after 20 or 30 years of being slammed into walls, fences and the ground by people who don't think rationally.
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