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Chicago does little to control police misconduct – or its costs
Most of these cases conclude as they occurred – outside of the public glare. People know about the high-profile police shootings of civilians and the multimillion-dollar settlements that result. But most cases are lesser known and settle for far less. Half of all cases paid out $36,000 or less, but they also contribute to a mounting taxpayer bill that goes largely unchecked by the mayor or City Council.
The City of Chicago spent more than $210 million for police misconduct lawsuits from 2012 to 2015, according to a Chicago Reporter analysis. It spent almost $53 million more on outside attorneys to litigate the cases. The Police Department exceeded its annual budget for lawsuits by almost $50 million, on average, in each of those years.
Yet, unlike some other major cities, Chicago doesn’t analyze the lawsuits for trends, identify the officers most frequently sued, or determine ways to reduce both the cost of the cases and officer misconduct.
Rather than rein in the practices that lead to these settlements, officials have borrowed millions to pay for police lawsuits, adding to the city’s crippling debt. Over time, the interest on the bonds will more than double the cost for police misconduct.
To analyze the settlements, the Reporter built a databaseof the 655 police misconduct lawsuits that paid out from 2012 to 2015. (Click here to read the methodology.)
Some findings confirm public perceptions about policing. Latinos and blacks are disproportionately represented in the lawsuits. More than half the lawsuits allege false arrest. A tiny cohort of officers are defendants in multiple lawsuits.
But other patterns gleaned from the lawsuits indicate that police misconduct extends beyond a few “bad apples” to department-wide practices.
- In the small fraction of cases where officers and the city admit liability, the officers rarely are disciplined.
- Nearly half of the lawsuits claim that officers filed false reports—and sometimes committed perjury on the witness stand—to cover up their misconduct.
- More than one-quarter of lawsuits allege that two or more officers conspired to violate a person’s civil rights. Nearly one-third allege that some officers on the scene could have but didn’t intervene to prevent misconduct.
- In one-quarter of excessive force lawsuits, the person who alleged police abuse was also charged with either resisting arrest or assault of a police officer.
- One in 10 cases involves minors. Officers have pointed guns at children, shot at teenagers and left toddlers alone while their parents were arrested.
- Roughly 1 in 6 cases alleges that an incident is part of a pattern of misconduct, fortified by specific Police Department policies or the city’s general failure to adequately investigate officer misconduct. The city usually successfully argues to dismiss these claims, or to separate them from particular claims about the incident. That means the city's policies and practices are rarely adjudicated.
http://chicagoreporter.com/chicago-d...-or-its-costs/
