An article appeared in The Economist a few years ago discussing the problems police forces
have endured when their officers used excessive force and caused harm. It was titled Wanted: cops with people skills.
It suggested that police work consisted of mostly mundane tasks more
akin to social work than television cops and robbers stuff. Police activities were rather safe and
becoming safer over time, yet police training and public assumptions view
police work as extremely dangerous and requiring defensive vigilance to avoid
harm.
“The reality of the job, as one
officer from a large west-coast agency explains, is far less glamorous. ‘The
public want us to come up and deal with a neighbour who is mowing their lawn at
3am. They want us to deal with their disruptive child. They want us to deal
with the crazy person who is walking down the street shouting.’ As crime has
fallen across America since the 1990s, policing has shifted more towards social
work than the drama seen on TV. Police culture, however, has not caught up.”
“Yet fewer police officers are
killed now than in the past, and the number who are shot is less than the
number who die in traffic accidents. Over time…a justified alertness to danger
may have warped into a belief that the swift use of force is the only thing
keeping cops safe. At its worst, this manifests itself in a fiercely defensive
culture.”
The article also suggests that police forces are using
the wrong strategies in recruiting new members.
It provides this example of a recruiting ad.
“To the sound of electric
guitars, heavily armed police officers fire assault rifles, drive squad cars
fast and pull their guns on fleeing crooks. ‘Are you qualified to join the thin
blue line?’ asks a narrator, in the sort of breathless voice you might expect
in a trailer for ‘Fast & Furious 7’. The advert’s aim is not to sell movie
tickets, however, but to recruit police officers in Gainesville, a city of
127,000 in Florida.”
“…if you try to recruit cops by telling them
they are social workers, fewer may apply. At least part of the glamour of the
job is the promise that you get the chance to use violence against bad people
in a way that ordinary civilians never can, except in video games.”
If you are trying to attract people who are thrilled by
the idea of violent activities, you are probably going to acquire the wrong
sorts of recruits. And those bad
recruits are going to cost you a lot of money and grief in the future. Andrew Cockburn produced an article, Blood Money: Taxpayers pick up the tab for police brutality, for Harper’s
Magazine. In it he discusses the
financial issues associated with excessive police violence. He provides this perspective.
“Policing is a comparatively safe occupation, ranking far behind logging, commercial fishing, roofing, groundskeeping, and other civilian jobs in terms of fatality rates. Nonetheless, police culture appears to be imbued with the notion that officers’ lives hang by a thread at all times, thus justifying a violent response to anything they perceive as a threat, such as the eighty-seven-year-old Georgia woman hit with a taser this August thanks to a knife she was carrying to cut dandelions. Prosecutors and jurors generally accept this dubious presumption of constant peril, so officers can usually avoid punishment by testifying that they feared for their lives.”
“But even when juries or
prosecutors balk at criminal charges or guilty verdicts, victims or bereaved
relatives are increasingly able to exact some financial satisfaction when
overwhelming evidence is available. In part, this is due to technology.
Ubiquitous smartphone, dashboard, and body cameras, as well as DNA-based checks
on forensic evidence, which can reverse past frame-ups, have caused
compensation payments to rise.”
While police and their departments are well-sheltered
from criminal responsibility for their actions, no such protection exists in
civil trials, particularly when videos exist of police abuse.
“A 2015 Wall
Street Journal study found that the ten biggest police
departments in the country had over the previous five years spent a collective
$1.02 billion to settle cases that included shootings, beatings, and
wrongful imprisonments.”
Those ten departments were spending an average of $20
million per year responding to grievances of harmed parties. Where does that money come from? Cockburn indicates studies that have
determined some of the money comes from police department funds that are appropriated
for that purpose, but mostly the money must come from other sources. Rarely does an offending police officer
suffer significant financial penalties, and department funds are rarely impacted.
Where do large cities with expensive penalties turn to
cover their costs? There is a financial instrument
referred to as a “police brutality bond.”
Why raise taxes to cover these additional expenses when you can borrow
the money and put the burden on some future government leaders.
Consider Chicago’s response to their police problems.
“Chicago, for example, raised
$709.3 million in the bond market between 2010 and 2017 to settle claims
such as the $5 million awarded to the family of Laquan McDonald, shot
sixteen times—all but one while he already lay wounded on the ground—by police
who then faked evidence to justify the killing.”
Chicago has a history of police abuse that suggests the
city will be dipping into the bond market continually over the years. This becomes a good investment for finance
companies. Cities are rarely allowed to
go bankrupt, so the chance of a significant investment loss is very small, while
at the same time, the city’s finances provide credit-rating agencies the
justification for letting financial firms charge cities like Chicago a high
interest rate.
“A $225 million bond issued
by Chicago in 2017 for the stated purpose of “settlements and judgments,” for
example, carries a 7.045 percent interest rate. Fees exacted by the
various financial institutions involved, beginning with lead underwriter
Goldman Sachs, creamed off at least $1.8 million.”
A non-profit agency called the Action Center on Race and
the Economy (ACRE) has been following the financial and social issues
associated with police abuse. It coined
the term “police brutality bonds.” It
estimates that the $709.3 million borrowed between 2010 and 2017 would end up
costing the city about $1.7 billion before the bonds were paid off.
While borrowing money allows Chicago to spread out
payments over many years, the annual payments are still significant, and that
money must come from somewhere. The only
sources available are taxation and the cutting of services. One can be sure that the police budget is safe. Those who study Chicago’s finances conclude
that the people who suffer the most from police abuse are the ones who also
suffer the most from the city’s financial problems.
“As to who is actually
supporting Chicago’s finances, including the brutality bonds, it’s shockingly
clear that poor people, mostly black, shoulder an undue burden. ACRE bluntly
termed this a ‘transfer of wealth from communities—especially over-policed
communities of color—to Wall Street and wealthy investors’.”
“Chicago, with its huge
portfolio of brutality borrowings, presents a striking demonstration of this
transfer at work. Not only do poor Chicagoans bear the brunt of police
misconduct itself, but as taxpayers they must share in compensating the
victims. In fact, they are actually taxed more onerously than their wealthy
neighbors across town (who are, of course, less likely to be shot or brutalized
by law enforcement). This striking example of racial injustice was laid bare in
a detailed 2017 investigation by the Chicago Tribune, which
revealed that the Cook County tax assessor’s office, which oversees Chicago,
had for many years been routinely overvaluing homes in poor neighborhoods and
undervaluing properties in wealthy ones. As a result, homeowners in
lower-income neighborhoods such as North Lawndale and Little Village had been
paying double the property tax rate levied on the more affluent residents of
areas such as the Gold Coast or Lincoln Park.”
“Further compounding this
disparity is Chicago’s heavy reliance on parking tickets and traffic fines as a
source of revenue, collecting nearly $264 million in 2016—7 percent
of the city’s operating budget. A recent ProPublica investigation
revealed that poor black neighborhoods furnished most of that sum, not least
because of the proliferation of cameras to detect red-light violations in these
areas. The take for city coffers is additionally boosted by residents who have
trouble finding the money to pay initial fines, which then balloon with late
fees and even more fines, forcing many to choose between losing their driver’s
license and going bankrupt. Fines for failing to display city vehicle
stickers—which now cost $200, thanks to a steep hike introduced by Emanuel in
2013—are a major cause of bankruptcy among black residents of Chicago.”
The poor also pay in more subtle ways. Bond payments take precedent over things like
screening for lead poisoning, school funding, mental health services, and
after-school programs. Again, the portion
of the population requiring these services aimed at limiting crime are the ones
most likely to suffer from the police abuse that caused the decrease in
funding. This generates a feedback loop
that ensures that aggressive policing will continue and more settlements for
the abused will be forthcoming. Police
departments can continue to argue for ever greater budgets and point to the
danger inherent in their work.
Cockburn is not very kind to the financial industry for
participating in this process.
“Given the phenomenon of
brutality bonds, it could therefore follow that high police budgets are, in
effect, a worthwhile investment as far as bondholders are concerned. They are a
bet placed on increased levels of police violence that generate lawsuits and
payouts, which ultimately lead to profitable investment products. Renewal of
the process is further guaranteed by cutbacks required to service the debt,
thus ensuring that underlying societal problems will endure and generate even
more investment opportunities.”
ACRE suggests that a better way to break this loop would
be to turn away from bond funding to an insurance-based system. For example, individual police officers could
inherit real financial responsibility if they were required to take out the
equivalent of a doctor’s malpractice insurance.
Funding the police department’s litigation expenses via insurance could
force an immediate financial response to bad behavior in terms of higher
premiums, rather than pushing the problem off on future general funding. Cockburn indicates that a number of smaller
cities do rely on insurance to cover
their liabilities, and the threat of immediately higher premiums or no coverage
at all has had the effect of generating improved performance by the police.
Cockburn’s bottom line is that improvements in police performance
are possible if bad behavior has real consequences, and if police departments
are willing to change their ways.
“Requiring officers to exhaust
all other means to resolve a situation before opening fire reduces killings by
25 percent, according to Campaign Zero, a nonprofit founded in the wake of
the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Rules banning
strangleholds bring down killings by 22 percent. The culture of individual
police departments, in terms of leadership and training, clearly makes a
difference. Between 2013 and 2016, for example, police in Buffalo, New York,
killed zero people, while police in Orlando, Florida—a city similar in
population, demographics, and crime rates—killed fifteen.”
The interested reader might find the following articles
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