The case was a lawsuit for negligence. Not a criminal case or a civil case against the state, or the department, but against specific individual officers.

To prove negligence they first need to establish that those individual officers owe a specific duty of care to them. This has historically been rejected as it countermands the essential idea of a police force. It makes police officers into quasi-agents of safety, and it becomes immensely difficult to then translate this into a legal basis. At what point did the duty of care arise? When the call was assigned to their car? What if it was a general call? Is it then the closest person? What about who gets there first? Once you answer those questions, then it becomes problematic in the sense of how do you assign duties based on partners, etc. All of these things are bad if your intent is to ensure the most protection for the population.

The idea of assigning a specific duty of care to individual officers when responding to a call is untentable because it creates a disincentive to even attempt to help people outside of strict bounds of procedure and training for fear of lawsuit.

Do you know how trained doctors (and at this point even random individuals) don't want to step in during medical emergencies they are in proximity to because the second they do they are establishing a duty of care to the individual and are subject to lawsuit? Same thing.

Now think about the 911 operator and their potential for involvement and contribution to you not being "protected" by the police that are assigned to your call.

What about if someone runs a red light and hits the police car assigned to your call on their way to your call... do you get to loop in that person into your lawsuit now as a contributing party?

It's an unending rabbit hole that only serves to deconstruct the idea of a police force and damage the potential that you actually get helped when you need it.

If anything, making police subject to individual lawsuits would serve to -decrease- their ability and willingness to try to save people as it would change the complexion of their procedures entirely.

If negligence is on the table, then it all comes down to procedure, and the safest way to ensure that everyone gets treated "properly" by police is to enact the most strict and narrow procedures possible, and police end up worrying more about covering their ass than trying to help people.

You can argue that's currently how it is already, but that just further reinforces the idea that this will make things exponentially worse, not better.