Police misconduct can destroy lives and irreparably harm communities. It can also devastate budgets.
Occasional headlines give a glimpse into the financial consequences of some of the most egregious cases of police misconduct—but those high-profile, multimillion dollar settlements are just the tip of the iceberg. Each year, many more police misconduct lawsuits result in smaller payouts to victims and survivors without media attention.
But exactly how much does police misconduct and abuse cost each year? How much has your local police department paid out in settlements?
Odds are, it’s all but impossible to find out. Basic questions such as how much is being paid, by whom, and for what kind of misconduct are virtually unanswerable in most places.
Why does this matter?
For one, these settlements are almost always paid by local governments (i.e., local taxpayers) –not the police officers involved, or even the police departments involved. And those costs are huge. The Washington Post found that over the course of a decade, the 25 largest police and sheriff’s departments in the United States made nearly 40,000 payouts for misconduct totaling $3.2 billion. Insurance companies have taken note and the premiums they charge cities have multiplied.
Despite paying for these settlements, however, most of us are unable to find out how much they cost us or why.
But even more importantly, access to this information can help prevent police misconduct and abuse from happening in the first place. Is there a pattern of frequent, costly lawsuits alleging excessive use of force? Has a department faced a high number of sexual harassment claims? With information in hand about how much is being paid by who and for what – policymakers could better identify some of the root causes of misconduct and work to eliminate them. The public meanwhile can assess how much is being done—and whether it’s enough.
That is front-end accountability, and it’s what public safety should look like in a democracy.
Last month, Senator Tim Kaine and Representative Don Beyer introduced the Cost of Police Misconduct Act to uncover some of this hidden data. The bill would help get key information on police misconduct costs into the hands of the public and empower the public to finally get answers not just on how much has been paid out, but who paid it, why, where, when, and whether there was discipline.
But neither local departments nor states should wait for Congress to (hopefully) act. Police departments and municipalities can and should follow the lead of places like Minneapolis, which began publishing data on payouts relating to police misconduct on its website. Yet, these isolated efforts are still not enough to put this information into broader context or ensure public access outlives a particular chief, mayor, or comptroller. Only legislation—such as a new Maryland law requiring use of force related settlement and judgement data—can do that.
That’s where the Policing Project can come in. Our model statute on data collection and transparency mandates the public release of data revealing the costs of police misconduct (and other should-be-public information about police interactions with the public). It includes provisions requiring the jurisdiction to make public the total amount it spent on police misconduct settlements and judgements, but also information about each payout such as the misconduct involved, who contributed to the payout, and whether it involved any additional agreement to alter police policy.
We are currently working with a number of jurisdictions to pass this transparency measure—or tailored versions of it, depending on what makes sense for an individual jurisdiction—into law.
Police misconduct is, of course, about a whole lot more than the money involved. Its biggest costs can never be measured in dollars and cents. But following the money provides us with a lot more information, and when empowered with that information, we can ensure police are accountable to the public before tragedy occurs. We can create better policies from the outset to avoid deadly and costly misconduct.
If you are a legislator interested in bringing this critical transparency measure to your jurisdiction – or an advocate hoping to bring it to your representative’s attention – please reach out to us at legislation@policingproject.org.