By Bonnie Kristian | December
29, 2014
Eric Garner's family plans to
sue the New York Police Department for $75 million. Tamir Rice's parents have
filed a wrongful death lawsuit. Michael Brown's family may likewise launch a
civil suit against the St. Louis police.
No matter the outcome of these
three legal actions, they're already guaranteed to have at least one thing in
common: Any settlement award would be overwhelmingly (if not completely) paid
by taxpayers, while the police officers responsible for the deaths of Garner,
Rice, and Brown would be mostly or entirely let off the financial hook.
This phenomenon is not unique
to these cases or locales. Indeed, it is common practice for the monetary costs
of suits alleging police misconduct — however grave — to be shifted away from
the officers responsible.
One study from June 2014
calculated that taxpayers picked up the tab for no less than 99.98 percent of
the $730 million paid to victims of civil rights violations by 44 of the
largest police departments from 2006 to 2011. New York City is relatively
unusual in that it requires "officers to contribute small amounts when
officers have been found to be acting outside of policy." Elsewhere, even
when the police departments involved agreed with the courts' decisions and
fired or otherwise punished the cops in question, officers' bank accounts
remain untouched.
In midsize and smaller cities,
the same study noted, officers "never contributed to settlements or
judgments in lawsuits brought against them." In fact, in jurisdictions
where it is illegal to shield police from paying (or at least contributing to)
their own settlement costs, many local governments simply ignore the law and
financially shield cops anyway.
Proponents of this system
argue, as the Supreme Court did in Forrester v. White (1988), that "the
threat of personal liability for damages can inhibit government officials in
the proper performance of their duties." Police who are preoccupied with
protecting their pocketbooks may be overly cautious while pursuing criminals,
the reasoning goes, so it's important to protect them from frivolous lawsuits
which could ruin them financially.
But in practice, police already
exist as a special legal class, enjoying many protections not afforded to the
rest of us. Cops are significantly less like to be indicted or convicted than
regular citizens, and they are often afforded an extra measure of privacy in
any tangle with the justice system. In Chicago specifically, police officers
accused of the worst types of abuse, like rape and excessive force, face a one
in 500 chance of experiencing any consequences more serious than a one-week
suspension.
And in the meantime, the costs
of these settlement payments quickly pile up, as victims and their families in
the more shocking or widely publicized cases may successfully sue for hundreds
of thousands or even millions of dollars. New York City taxpayers paid out some
$735 million for police misconduct settlements in 2012 alone, and the NYPD
expects annual settlement spending to top $800 million by 2016.
Cleveland recently agreed to
pay $3 million to the families of two men who were killed by police. In August,
L.A. settled the death of an unarmed veteran for $5 million. By comparison,
Denver has gotten off easy, spending not quite $11 million on police
settlements involving brutality or civil rights violations in the last decade.
But it gets worse. Taxpayers
"in some cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, are paying three times
for officers who repeatedly commit abuses: once to cover their salaries while
they commit abuses; next to pay settlements or civil jury awards against officers;
and a third time through payments into police 'defense' funds provided by the
cities," according to research from Human Rights Watch. Suffice it to say
taxpayers aren't getting a good deal.
Of course, some suits do manage
to make officers pay. This typically requires a special demand by the victims
or their families in pursuit of accountability, and it frequently results in a
far smaller settlement. "[These victims] want an acknowledgment that the
police did them wrong or hurt them," says Craig Futterman, a professor at
University of Chicago Law. "That's why some of these settlements are for
such small amounts."
Maybe more important than the
size of the award, however, is the incentive provided by mandating police
contribution to settlements.
While requiring cops to wear
body cameras seems like a necessary step toward accountability post-Ferguson,
the lack of indictment for Eric Garner's death (which was caught on camera)
suggests video alone may not do the trick. Cynical though it might sound,
making police officers more financially responsible for their behavior could be
a stronger incentive for justice — not to mention a boon to taxpayers now
paying thrice over for systemic police brutality.
With a fixed requirement of,
say, 50 percent officer contribution, settlement awards would be far lower to
ensure they could be collected. Yet what these awards might lose in size they
would gain in meaning, giving the victim and his family a greater sense of
justice.
Even more important, however,
is to avoid instances of police brutality in the first place. And if monetary
penalties can effectively (and literally) raise the cost of police engaging in
abusive behavior, this reform is definitely worth a try.
