Perspective:
Want to curb police brutality? Change the law
George Floyd in Minneapolis. Marvin Booker in Denver. The list of African Americans murdered by law enforcement goes on and on and on. Colorado is far from immune from police violence directed at minorities.
Police brutality hasn’t increased. Videoing brutal cops has increased and white America is finally seeing it. As a life-long civil rights lawyer, for almost 25 years my firm has gone to federal court every day to try to get justice for our clients who suffered at the bloody hands of the few criminals wearing police badges.
City Council, like clueless parents, wring their hands and cluck their tongues while they write checks for millions of taxpayer dollars to pay abused citizens off for their out of control police. Why? The answer is clear – 100% indemnification of bad cops by taxpayers. Cops don’t pay for their violence, you the taxpayer pays. On a civil rights suit, most cities are not legally bound to pay the settlement or damages incurred by their bad cops, yet they all do. In Colorado, there is a law requiring indemnification up to a limit of $100,000 but cities routinely pay far more than that, including millions of dollars to bail out violent cops. The routine goes like this: Cop beats/ shoots/pepper sprays/tases a citizen in violation of the Constitution. Citizen files an internal affairs complaint.
Internal affairs is an abject joke as it always works out well for the cops when they are investigated by the cops. A civil rights lawsuit gets filed and the City settles. The brutal cop has been exonerated by internal affairs so absolutely no discipline whatsoever is imposed but this same ‘angelic’ cop has just settled the lawsuit for perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The kicker is, the cop never pays a single penny of the settlement. The cop is represented by high priced lawyers at taxpayer expense. The City pays the settlement, the cop is not disciplined as the internal affairs whitewash machine has exonerated him/her and this same bad, violent cop is set loose to continue to rack up violent incident after violent incident and costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. In other words, there is absolutely no consequence whatsoever imposed on bad cops. They have no incentive to ever change their violent behavior. If one cop lost a house, a car, a paycheck, police violence would absolutely plummet but the police lackeys in charge of Denver and other cities will never do that.
They whine that they don’t want police to be worried about a lawsuit when they are confronting a dangerous violent criminal. Now, I’ll throw in the obligatory ‘yes it’s a dangerous job, a few bad apples etc. etc.’ My response is that following the Constitution is hard, but if you can’t do it, turn in your badge and gun. A change in the law is needed to change police behavior. I’m not saying no indemnification should occur as violent cops inflict grievous damage to people who deserve far more than most cops can pay.
Brutalized citizens deserve to collect from the city. However, in order to deter the police, a small percentage of every settlement or damages award should be the responsibility of the cop with no indemnification permitted by the government. Once actual financial consequences occur, incidents of police brutality will plummet. As long as taxpayers continue to foot the bill for violent cops, and internal affairs continues to whitewash police misconduct, violent, brutal police misconduct can be expected to continue unabated.