Cities pay price when police punished
Training, ordered changes, settlements cause some to pass on costs to taxpayers
The costs of police confrontations with citizens are mounting in U.S. cities, forcing many to spend millions more on training and some to seek tax increases to pay for federally mandated changes in departments that used excessive force.
New Orleans voters in April will consider raising property taxes to pay the costs of a 2010 consent decree, one of 16 enforced by the Justice Department in the past six years. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson on Feb. 1 proposed a half-percentage point increase in the local income tax to improve policing, after a 2015 decree that will cost $10.6 million this year and a projected $7.1 million in each of the next four years, city documents show.
Spending on police training in 23 of the 25 most populous cities has increased by 17 percent since 2013 to $317.9 million last year, with at least $332.5 million budgeted in 2016, according to data provided in response to public-records requests and compiled by Bloomberg. The numbers don’t capture all the training costs because some cities don’t track them separately.
“Cities just don’t have this kind of money,” said Kevin Kelley, president of the Cleveland City Council. “Nobody advocates unconstitutional policing, but the point is this is going to be very expensive.”
In Ferguson, Mo., where the 2014 shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old caused civil unrest, the St. Louis suburb said the costs associated with a consent decree could consume more than one-quarter of its $14.5 million annual operating budget.
Ferguson’s city council wouldn’t sign off on a proposed agreement Feb. 9. The city, which projects a $2.8 million deficit and last September had its credit reduced to junk status by Moody’s Investors Service, estimates the costs could be as high as $10 million over a threeyear period. The day after the council’s decision, the federal government sued the suburb of 21,000 people, alleging in a civil-rights lawsuit that the city violates residents’ rights and misuses law enforcement to generate revenue.
“There’s never been a concerted national effort to really spend a lot of money to address police misconduct,” said Stephen Rushin, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law who studies consent decrees. “We’re finally coming to the recognition that correcting police misconduct is an expensive proposition.”
Even where the federal government isn’t intervening, municipalities are facing higher costs from lawsuit judgments after videotaped confrontations in which black victims died at the hands of officers.
In July 2014, a white New York police officer was recorded using an apparent choke-hold to subdue Eric Garner, who was selling cigarettes illegally. Garner, who was black, died and his death was ruled a homicide, but the officer was cleared by a grand jury.
Subsequent altercations in Ferguson, Baltimore and Chicago drew attention as well as civil-rights investigations. Videotape evidence gave weight to allegations of excessive force.
The risk of litigation involving police “has become very substantial,” said Marshall Davies, executive director of the Public Risk Management Association, which is in the business of evaluating and minimizing exposure for governments.
“The risk has been there forever, as long as there have been police forces,” Davies said. “Suddenly, the risk has greatly increased in size.”
Los Angeles has seen its payouts for cases involving excessive or unlawful use of force and civil-rights violations reach $23.6 million for the fiscal year ended June 30 from $4.6 million in the year ended June 30, 2012, according to records provided by the city attorney’s office.
City Councilman Mitchell Englander, chairman of the public safety committee, said the city often settles cases even when they lack merit to eliminate the risk of going to court.