The Cost - A Memorial Field

”The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
—W.E.B. DuBois (1868–1963)

Who pays for police misconduct?

The true cost of controversial uses of force in policing is first measured in human lives. Yet, many Americans do not realize that the financial burden of wrongful deaths is shifted onto taxpayers due to a lack of police accountability for misconduct. If a national program systematically collected the data needed to quantify and qualify the costs of police violence and its resulting procedural injustices, communities could then determine how they want elected policymakers to negotiate contracts with police departments. Understanding the scope of the costs could compel us to reform a system that privileges officers’ survival over public safety, especially when the perception of danger by law enforcement is impacted by racism and reductive biases. Conversation around deeply systemic police violence has quieted at a time when it continues to escalate, despite demands and promises for reform. Community-based alternatives are needed to help reduce the reach of policing.

Richard williams Norman Rockwell style painting

Richard Williams for Mad Magazine, 2015, update of Norman Rockwell’s “The Runaway,” 1958.

Costs and legislation related to police misconduct

5 WRONGFUL DEATHS THAT COST TAXPAYERS
$103 MILLION

$38 million
Baltimore County, MD
$27 million
City of Minneapolis, MN
$20 million
Prince George’s County, MD
$12 million
Louisville, KY
$6 million
Cleveland, OH

IN DALLAS 2024
The family of Botham Shem Jean may never see a penny of a recent $100 million penalty for a police shooting case.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/us/botham-jean-settlement-compensation.html

IN MEMPHIS 2024…
The Black Lives Matter movement resulted in legislative gains with the The “Tyre Nichols Driving Equality Act” that bars officers from conducting certain traffic stops for low-level violations and more. In 2024, State Representative advances a bill to cancel the act claiming crime ticked up because of police reforms.

26 DAYS INTO 2023…
Police shot and murdered 72 people. Technology like body-worn cameras received widespread support but usage failed to achieve such promises (National Institute of Justice, ACLU). Nearly half of law enforcement agencies own these devices as of 2016, only 14% of fatal police shooting cases have body cam footage (Washington Post). Even wearing body cams didn’t stop five Tennessee police officers from brutally beating Tyre Nichols to death on January 7, 2023 (NPR). Nor did it prevent LAPD from tasing Keenan Anderson as he begged for help that same week.

IN ALABAMA 2021…
Legislature passed a law to create a database to track bad actors in police departments and keep police with records of misconduct out of local agencies and from policing neighborhoods.
However, the funding was not secured: millions to create the database and about $80,000/yr for maintenance.

IN COLORADO 2020…
A law eliminated “qualified immunity” for police officers and granted local governments the ability to make officers pay 5% or up to $25,000 of a settlement or judgment from a lawsuit in certain circumstances.
Despite this law, as of 2023, no local government has required an offending Colorado police officer to pay for his misconduct.

FINANCIAL GYMNASTICS OVER POLICE MISCONDUCT SETTLEMENTS
“From 2015 to 2019, more than $2 billion, mostly taxpayer money, was used on civilian payouts for police misconduct in only the 20 largest police departments.”

Law Fare Media