When a cop harms or kills a suspect, or puts public safety and private property in danger, someone has to pay for their legal fees and misconduct settlements. The average American might assume that just as a private citizen must pay all of their legal obligations, a negligent officer caught in the wrong would too.
Many are shocked to learn it isn’t the cop in question, nor the police force they answer to, that ultimately foots the bill. So who pays?
“Typically, big cities pay for police claims (and other claims) from their [tax revenue funded] central coffers—which are large enough to be able to settle bills of millions of dollars. But smaller municipalities don’t have the same luxury, so they buy liability insurance” with tax dollars, Quartz geopolitics reporter Annalisa Merelli explains.
In instances where liability insurance claims pay for damages, “insurance companies are driven by dollars and not politics,” said University of California law professor Joanna Schwartz, “and insurers can increase departments’ and cities’ premiums or even pull out if [it represents] a financially risky behavior for the insurance company.”
Where ethical, moral, or political arguments fail to encourage law enforcement reform, the strict mandates required to remain in good standing with an insurance trust could convince cities - and the citizens who pay those bills through taxes - to implement changes that protect vulnerable populations from the harm inflicted by police misconduct.
As the cost of police brutality balloons and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic shows no sign of stopping, many municipalities have a new concern to address: will misconduct settlements exhaust the limited funds cities have available and lead to tax hikes?
“The triple-combination shock of pandemic, social unrest, and potential police legal fees seen in Minneapolis could very likely be the future many cities will face,” City Lab reports. City budgets replenish themselves through tax revenue raised by their citizens. But when those funds run low, tax increases soon follow.
One small city - Inkster, Michigan - even had to drastically increase property taxes to pay its police brutality settlements. This stark example could help “voters understand that they are the police,” University of Chicago law professor John Rappaport contends.
While risk and cost management consume the thoughts of public servants, it’s not unheard of for a city to dismantle its greatest financial burden - their police department - altogether, which is what the Minneapolis City Council recently voted to do. The concern that follows this radical decision is that of which public safety model should take its place.
The many arguments in favor of shared accountability provide a new means to evaluate how the lives of Black people, who are disproportionately criminalized and brutalized by police, are valued as well as the opportunity to reimagine a world brimming with justice and without unchecked police violence.