High-profile cases of police misconduct -- such as recent scandals in Los Angeles and New York -- can influence police liability coverage arrangements nationwide.

The media attention to such incidents can lead to widespread mistrust of police. Such mistrust, in turn, can bias juries hearing liability cases against law enforcement agencies. And underwriters, sensitive to prevailing jury attitudes, may lose their appetite for police liability business, say brokers and risk managers familiar with municipal risks.

In a soft insurance market, isolated incidents of police misconduct may not result in coverage problems. If rates in the overall property/casualty insurance market firm up, however, the attitude of underwriters could easily change.

For now, insurance remains available and affordable for law enforcement risks, and demand for alternative risk financing arrangements generally has not increased.

One exception is Los Angeles, which is considering alternative methods for financing potential liabilities stemming from an ongoing scandal involving about 70 officers. Those officers, from the city's Rampart Division, are under suspicion for allegedly falsifying evidence, covering up unjustified shootings, and other crimes.

To avoid similar misconduct claims, many police departments nationwide have adopted creative training procedures and are reinforcing their conduct standards to stem citizen complaints and avoid liability exposures.

Some agencies say that sort of risk management has helped decrease the number of misconduct claims filed against them.

While such measures can reduce a police department's misconduct losses, a department's liability exposure can still be raised by events outside its control, experts say.

Societal and juror attitudes toward police are a significant concern, said Lewis Leigh, executive director of the Washington Cities Insurance Authority in Renton, Wash. The WCIA insures nearly 100 municipalities, including about 85 that have police departments.

The focus by the media and civil liberty organizations on law enforcement's handling of the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, for example, influences juror evaluations of police conduct throughout Washington, he said.

Even incidents farther from home, such as racial profiling and police scandals in Los Angeles and New York, influence the way Washington juries view police, Mr. Leigh said.

Municipalities, as a result, must consider more than just having good supporting facts when they weigh defending themselves against police misconduct allegations. They also must consider factors such as society's prevailing attitude toward specific police practices, Mr. Leigh said.

"You have to be careful what you take to trial now," he explained. "There are two barometers. One barometer is, do you have good facts? Another is the social circumstances."

To defend against police misconduct allegations, "You better have followed your procedures, and your procedures need to be acceptable to society," Mr. Leigh advised.

To minimize its losses, the WCIA spent a year reviewing the conduct policies of all of its member police departments to ensure that those policies are appropriate, Mr. Leigh said.

A high-profile case in one city can put police everywhere under a microscope, agreed Gary Martin, managing director and chairman of Aon Corp.'s Public Sector Alliance unit in San Francisco.

"It basically erodes the credibility of what can be considered defensible police work," he said.

Some underwriters viewing those trends will change their requirements, demanding higher deductibles or rate hikes, Mr. Martin said. Underwriters did just that following the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers in 1991, he noted. When the overall market softened, however, insurers' push for firmer pricing dwindled.

Currently, there are no signs of insurers exiting or sharply raising rates across the board for law enforcement liability coverage, said Mr. Martin, who expects such coverage to remain abundant. Accounts with substantial losses, though, may face higher premiums or deductibles.

High-profile police misconduct cases are the exception, not the rule, for most risk managers.

One of the biggest sources of loss for police departments insured by the WCIA is auto collision claims resulting from the growing use of computers in police cars, said Mr. Leigh.

Police more frequently are involved in collisions and other accidents because they are distracted by keying in or looking up data while driving, he explained.

As a result of the increase in collision claims, police liability is now quickly catching up to employment liability as the second greatest loss generator for the WCIA. Until recently, the police losses had been a distant third to employment-related losses.

Meanwhile, police agencies across the nation are employing creative training methods to improve their officers' morale and performance.

"Verbal judo" is one approach now used nationwide. Its proponents teach police to use language to obtain compliance by redirecting hostility, rather than confronting it head-on with potentially lethal force.

"It's the martial art of the mind and mouth," said George J. Thompson, President of the Verbal Judo Institute in Albuquerque, N.M. He has taught his course to more than 170 police departments, including some of the nation's largest.

While the technique can be used in a variety of law enforcement situations, from hostage negotiations to calming domestic disputes, it is also gaining in popularity among other employers. Mr. Thompson said. He has now taught the skills to airline workers and other employees that regularly deal with customer relations in a stressful environment.

One aspect of the training teaches officers to "leave their egos at home."

By doing so, they are less likely to take matters personally and lose their temper when someone verbally assaults them or resists instructions, Mr. Thompson explained.

The vast majority of police altercations result from a loss of temper, Mr. Thompson said. His program teaches police to use persuasion and appeal to people's self-interest through, for example, convincing them that certain behaviors will lead to the best outcome for them.

Verbal judo trains police to do something that is not natural -- to remain composed in the face of an insult, said Captain Greg Kyritsis, academy commander for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in California.

The Sheriff's Department tracked citizen complaints over four years and found the program helped reduce such complaints by 60%, Capt. Kyritsis said. Therefore, the program has helped the department's image, he said.

"It works," Capt. Kyritsis said. "It's a tactic and another one of our tools. You have to remember, any time you put your hands on someone, it's going to look bad to someone else."

Capt. Kyritsis, along with other advocates of verbal judo, successfully lobbied to make the technique part of the training recommended for all of California's police departments by the state's Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

Police agencies now are citing their verbal judo training in court testimony when defending themselves against excessive force lawsuits, Mr. Thompson said.

Other police risk management experts are focusing on improving the performance level of departments. Some departments, for example, are moving away from just preventing or managing liabilities to improving their "organizational climate," said G. Patrick Gallagher, president of The Gallagher Westfall Group Inc., a risk management and leadership development consultant in Indian Valley, Va.

One way to do that, he said, is to create "value-driven" departments, rather than rule-driven organizations. Individuals need to learn values -- such as integrity, courage and respect -- to appeal to when making decisions, he said. But merely putting those values in a policy is worthless if they are not constantly reinforced by police leadership and through a variety of department practices, Mr. Westfall said.

Creativity in handling police misconduct is not limited to risk prevention methods.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan in February proposed financing the risk of future Rampart-related liability claims by issuing a bond. The debt would be paid with Los Angeles' share of settlement money from tobacco manufacturers' settlement with states, including California, for health care costs from treating smoking-related illnesses.

The mayor's proposal assumes that Rampart-related claims will cost the city about $100 million. But the City Administrative Office has found that the mayor's risk securitization recommendation may not serve the city well. The CAO argued in a March report that relying on the tobacco funding is risky because the exact amount of money available is not yet known.

As an alternative, the CAO recommends using variable-rate judgment obligation bonds with the city setting aside about $20 million per year during the next several years to pay for any judgments or to fund debt servicing.

The recommendations are still wending their way through the city's political and budget-allocation process. Otherwise, Los Angeles is self-insured for such losses, and exactly what route it will take to pay for Rampart losses remains to be determined.

It is not a given, however, that the city will simply pay all Rampart-related claims, said Victor T. Parker, risk manager for the city of Los Angeles. The city is also preparing to defend itself, he said.