How to Fix the Financial Gymnastics of Police Misconduct Settlements

On March 12, the city of Minneapolis agreed to pay George Floyd’s family $27 million for his wrongful death via the knee of a police officer. Despite being the largest pre-trial civil rights settlement, it is only a fraction of the taxpayer money spent on settling police brutality. From 2015 to 2019, over $2 billion, mostly taxpayer money, was used on civilian payouts for police misconduct in only the 20 largest police departments. 

Derek Chauvin, the police officer currently on trial for Floyd’s death, is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The current structure for addressing civilian payouts for police misconduct overwhelmingly absolves officers like Chauvin from any financial culpability. This is mostly due to qualified immunity, which is a court doctrine that absolves police officers from civil liability. While qualified immunity often shields government officials broadly from personal liability, it is particularly used with law enforcement. And though it is only applicable to civil proceedings, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and even jurors are often swayed during grand juries and criminal proceedings by the protection of qualified immunity.

Depending on the state, officers accused of misconduct might even keep their police pension and even be able to sue the municipality for back pay if they are fired and then found criminally not guilty. The money for civilian payouts for police misconduct does not come from police department budgets. Rather, civilian payouts overwhelmingly come from general funds, though some come from bonds and even insurance policies, particularly in smaller areas. 

It is clear that alternatives to addressing civilian payouts are warranted. Recommendations include abolishing qualified immunity, moving payouts to police department insurance policies and having individual officers carry liability insurance. A combination of these options may be needed to increase accountability, reduce police killings and eradicate racial disparities in police use of force. 

Besides the settlement for Floyd’s death, there is a series of other notable civil settlements for police misconduct including: $38 million in Baltimore County, Maryland for the wrongful death of Korryn Gaines and the accidental shooting of her four-year-old son, Kodi; $20 million in Prince George’s County, Maryland for the wrongful death of William Green; $12 million for the wrongful death of Breonna Taylor of Louisville, Kentucky; and $6 million in Cleveland, Ohio for the wrongful death of 12-year old Tamir Rice playing with a toy gun in a park. All the people mentioned above are Black. These cases are not cherry-picked but, rather, are part of a much larger systemic problem in policing and municipal government. Black people are roughly 2.5 times as likely to be killed by police than whites. Blacks are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police when they are not attacking or do not have a weapon relative to whites, like Floyd, Green and Rice. Black women are disproportionately more likely to be killed in their homes by police, like Taylor and Gaines. 

There are also many incidents that do not end in death but will probably result in civilian payouts for police misconduct. Some of the most recent incidents include a five-year-old who was arrested and yelled at by police after leaving school in Montgomery County, Maryland as well as Marion Humphrey, Jr., a 32-year-old law student, detained for over two hours as state troopers in Arkansas searched his U-Haul. Humphrey, Jr., the son of a retired judge, has already sued the Arkansas State Police. 

But, whites are killed and brutalized by police too, like Daniel Shaver in Arizona, James Scott in North Dakota and Brandon Stanley in Kentucky. Though Black people and Native Americans are disproportionately more likely to be killed by police, in absolute numbers, there are more white people killed by police than other groups because they represent roughly 65 percent of the U.S. population. 

Shaver was killed in a hotel hallway by police officer Philip Brailsford. Police were called after

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