Colorado’s largest police union is work­ing to cre­ate new lia­bil­i­ty cov­er­age that will pro­tect its mem­bers from pay­ing from their per­son­al pock­et­books if found liable for exces­sive force law­suit set­tle­ments under the state’s police account­abil­i­ty law passed in June.

The Col­orado Fra­ter­nal Order of Police announced a plan this week that would cov­er offi­cers’ lia­bil­i­ty of up to $25,000. The union’s lead­er­ship gave pre­lim­i­nary approval to the new cov­er­age, though each of the indi­vid­ual lodges in the state that rep­re­sent about 8,000 law enforce­ment offi­cers will have to vote to final­ize the plan.

“With the polit­i­cal cli­mate in the state and nation­al­ly towards police, the pres­ence of the ACLU and the fear the Exec­u­tive Board has heard from both local lodge lead­ers and mem­bers direct­ly ask­ing for a plan, we encour­age all local lodges to vote in the affir­ma­tive to move this for­ward,” Stephen Schulz, pres­i­dent of the Col­orado FOP, wrote in an announce­ment about the cov­er­age. The orga­ni­za­tion did not respond to calls or an email request­ing an inter­view for this story.

The change comes as Col­orado law enforce­ment grap­ple with the impli­ca­tions of the new law, which states an offi­cer could be on the hook for 5% of any set­tle­ment or judg­ment, up to $25,000, reached in a civ­il law­suit over their actions if their employ­er finds they act­ed in bad faith. The new pro­vi­sions were signed into law in June in the wake of weeks of protests over police bru­tal­i­ty and racism.

Lead­ers of police depart­ments and unions warned that the change would cause offi­cers to leave their jobs, though its unclear to what extent that has hap­pened. Some cities, like Green­wood Vil­lage, have adopt­ed mea­sures stat­ing offi­cials there will nev­er find an offi­cer to have act­ed in bad faith, essen­tial­ly shield­ing cops from per­son­al finan­cial liability.

“The offi­cer doesn’t have to wor­ry about hav­ing $25,000 assessed against him because he’ll be insured” if the new pro­gram is approved, said Mike Brit­ton, vice pres­i­dent of the Den­ver Sheriff’s FOP lodge. “It’s just like a doc­tor. That’s what it’s got­ten to. We as a union feel like we need to pro­tect our members.”

As pro­posed, the FOP’s added cov­er­age would cost $7 a month per mem­ber, which would bring month­ly dues for the legal defense pro­gram up to $30 a month. If approved, it would ten­ta­tive­ly begin in October.

The change has also prompt­ed entre­pre­neur­ship from insur­ance com­pa­nies look­ing to sell a new product.

“It was sort of amaz­ing to me that police offi­cers didn’t have any lia­bil­i­ty at all before and that munic­i­pal­i­ties were pay­ing 99.9% of the judg­ments,” said Jeff Har­ri­son, pres­i­dent of Pry­mus Insurance.

The Texas-based insur­ance firm is talk­ing with Col­orado law­mak­ers, city lead­ers and police asso­ci­a­tions about a lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance pro­gram they are cre­at­ing for offi­cers, Har­ri­son said.

Per­son­al insur­ance is the best route because prices will respond to an offi­cers’ actions. If an offi­cer is named in mul­ti­ple suits, his or her pre­mi­um will rise, he said. If they com­plete risk-reduc­tion train­ing, or go years with­out a com­plaint, the price could drop, he said.

“It should be like get­ting car insur­ance,” Har­ri­son said.

The company’s insur­ance should be for sale in the next few weeks, Har­ri­son said, and will like­ly cost between $40 and $50 a month. The roll out of the pro­gram has been delayed because the company’s actu­ar­ies have strug­gled to gath­er com­pre­hen­sive data on law­suit set­tle­ments in Col­orado and across the country.

“How do you price risk when you don’t even know what it is?” Har­ri­son said.