Public stuck if APD reform, risk fund come up short

Over the past seven years the city of Albuquerque has paid, on average, nearly $9 million annually to settle law enforcement civil rights cases, prompting state Auditor Tim Keller to advise Mayor Richard Berry to bolster the city’s risk management fund or face a projected multimillion-dollar deficit in the years ahead.

If Keller wasn’t campaigning to succeed Berry — who isn’t running for re-election — his dire prediction might have been more convincing. Besides, we’re being told by Berry’s Chief Administrative Officer Rob Perry that the city has already set up a plan to improve the financial health of its risk management fund by pulling money from other city departments, subject to City Council approval.

And, Perry says, with reforms being made at the Albuquerque Police Department as part of the city’s 2014 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, he’s “hopeful that future outcomes will be much improved.”

Reading between the lines, Perry is saying the reforms, necessitated after the Department of Justice determined APD had a pattern and practice of excessive force, will lead to fewer lawsuits and settlements against APD.

The reforms will need to. Because a bottom line that depends on shifting funds from other city departments into the risk management fund, which pays for uninsured losses, is little more than robbing Peter to pay Paul. That’s not sound fiscal policy. But the payouts have to be covered, and they have been on a steep rise, totaling more than $62 million since 2009. Here’s a breakout:

In 2010, $6,079,942; 2011, $8,132,328; 2012, $1,985,101; 2013, $6,307,190; 2014, $14,958,354; 2015, $10,849,856; and 2016, $14,062,281.

Keller’s analysis didn’t include a comparison of what other similar-sized American cities have paid in law enforcement settlements, so it’s difficult to say whether Albuquerque is extraordinary in its payouts. But from 2011 to 2015, the city paid out at least $28 million to the families of men killed by APD officers. It’s hard to imagine that any similar-sized city exceeded that amount, given this city’s unusually high incidence of police shootings.

We hope Perry’s crystal ball is in good working order — because as important as a sound risk management fund is, a successful effort to reduce police shootings and unnecessary use of force is even more so. They are intertwined, and taxpayers and residents are right to expect both.