Police don't pay damages in civil rights cases — taxpayers do

Police don't pay damages in civil rights cases — taxpayers do
(Image credit: iStock)

When police officers are found guilty of civil rights violations in civil suits, victims and/or their families frequently receive large monetary settlements that can total in the millions. But the guilty officers almost never pay those fines, instead shifting the costs to taxpayers through city government.

According to the research of UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz, from 2006 to 2011 guilty officers paid just $171,300 out of $735 million in settlement costs in 9,225 cases from big cities. Schwartz says that New York City, where the family of Eric Garner will soon sue for $75 million, "has required officers to contribute small amounts when officers have been found to be acting outside of policy," but it is still typically a "minuscule fraction" of the total settlement.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.