UCLA School of Law

Police officers rarely pay anything towards settlements and judgments entered against them. This observation has been taken to mean that local governments virtually always agree to indemnify their officers and pay the entirety of settlements and judgments entered against them. Yet indemnification decisions are more nuanced, complex, and uncertain-and officers are denied indemnification more often-than payout data suggest. This Article examines the unindemnified: the authority under which officers may be denied indemnification by their employers; the circumstances in which local governments deny or threaten to deny officers indemnification; the ways that indemnification denials influence the litigation of civil rights cases (including why even unindemnified officers rarely pay); the impact of indemnification denials and threatened denials on our system of constitutional remediation; and steps that legislators, government officials, and litigants could take to better align indemnification rules and practices with the compensatory and deterrence goals of §1983.