Settlements in lawsuits over police misconduct cost taxpayers millions every year — and while they compensate victims or their families, the settlements don't necessarily stop bad behavior, experts say.
wrongful death lawsuit
Settlements usually result in at least one of two outcomes: The person or estate bringing the case can receive money, or, more rarely, a policy change may follow the settlement. Settlements rarely include an admission of wrongdoing or guilt, said Joanna Schwartz, an attorney, law professor and the faculty director of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. John J. Catanzara Jr.
Departments even budget for such settlements, Schwartz said. Her research shows that"in most jurisdictions, payouts in police misconduct cases are less than 1% of local government's budgets." On average, funding a police department takes about a third or a quarter of a city's budget, Schwartz said. "New York City can have millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars to pay up and it's still less than 1% of the government's budget," Schwartz said.
"There's no national database of police officers that are terminated for misconduct," Houghtaling said."So they may commit misconduct in one jurisdiction and maybe lose their job there, and then go down the street 30 miles to a different city or county or get a new job. There is sort of this disconnect between accountability and the financial consequences for it." "Nobody can explain to me how that even makes sense," he said.