28 ms·

Police misconduct settlements

221 points by IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

jron 6y ago
The data was used for this article: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/police-misconduct-costs-cities-millions-every-year-but-thats-where-the-accountability-ends/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/police-misconduct-costs...
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Might be useful to add to the title "based on FOIA requests for 50 cities in USA", or at the very least add "(USA)".
jakelazaroff 6y ago
There’s a simple way to effect change at the legislative level: force cities to pay for police misconduct settlements out of existing police budgets and pension funds, rather than apportioning taxpayer money to do so.
- alostpuppy 6y ago
  I like that idea.
- pavel_lishin 6y ago
  Is there any reason to believe they won't up the budget to account for this?
  - curryst 6y ago
    I don't think cities can run a deficit. They would have to pass tax increases to fund that, which would be unpopular.
    - yonig 6y ago
      Hello from Chicago
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > I don't think cities can run a deficit. Lol
      - smnrchrds 6y ago
        In Alberta (and perhaps elsewhere in Canada), cities are legally not allowed to run deficits.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        New York City is running a budget deficit of $5,250,000,000.
    - mark212 6y ago
      You’re right for cities and counties (and the state itself) in California. None are allowed to operate at a deficit, hence the creation of the state “rainy day fund” by Gov. Brown after the 2008 recession which has worked very well in tempering the current fiscal issues in the Covid pandemic, at least at the state level.
    - zamfi 6y ago
      > They would have to pass tax increases to fund that Or reallocate money previously allocated to libraries, social workers, community colleges, public transportation, etc. etc.
    - pavel_lishin 6y ago
      Any reason they wouldn't move the budget away from other services?
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > force cities to pay for police misconduct settlements out of existing police budgets and pension funds, rather than apportioning taxpayer money to do so Err that is taxpayer money? Police budgets aren't the police's personal money. They don't care if you take it away it's no problem for them as long as they're still being paid.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    Take it from their pension (and cut their budgets). Yes, that's wasted taxpayer money but I'm sure the police also view it as their own personal money.
    - xupybd 6y ago
      What if that happened in your company? Another person's misconduct resulted in you getting your pension drained?
      - solosoyokaze 6y ago
        I don’t have a pension.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        Pension / retirement fund, whatever.
        solosoyokaze 6y ago
        There's a big difference. Pensions are paid by the employer and retirement accounts are paid by the employee. Excessive benefits aside, the culture of the police is rotten and policing in the US needs to be rethought from the ground up.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > There's a big difference. Pensions are paid by the employer and retirement accounts are paid by the employee. You make it sound like you're paid more if you get a pension! If the company pays into a pension for or gives you the money which you then pay into a pension... guess what it's the same money just a slightly different setup. I've got a pension I pay into myself, so it doesn't need to be your employer which does it.
- damagednoob 6y ago
  > out of existing police budgets and pension funds So the incentive here is: I better keep tabs on my partner or else I'll lose some of my pension Or I better cover for my partner or else I'll lose some of my pension. I don't think this is the solution you think it is.
  - taxidump 6y ago
    With little to no repercussions financially to the department or employee and no major career punishments, what do you propose instead?
    - wonderwonder 6y ago
      Force individual officers to carry liability insurance similar to malpractice insurance for lawyers and doctors. If the insurance is forced to pay out a couple times the officer would be uninsurable and thus unemployable.
      - threatofrain 6y ago
        But is that accompanied with officers being exposed to individual liability? And removing qualified immunity? Because that would be the bigger argument.
      - opo 6y ago
        This is suggested quite often, but no one is going to sell you a liability policy to protect you from committing crimes. When police officers commit blatant misconduct the officers involved should at least be fired and criminal charges should be applied to them if applicable. This is how it works for every other job, not sure why police should be different.
    - alistairSH 6y ago
      Limit qualified immunity and require officers to carry personal liability insurance on the job. Increase police training requirements. They're woefully undertrained in the US (at least relative to Germany and several other Western European nations). National LEO registration or something similar to stop the movement of bad officers from one department to another.
- GavinMcG 6y ago
  Market-focused rhetoric over the past decades has made it tempting to think we can just allocate payments the right way to accomplish what we want. This is one case where that fails. Instead, we need leadership. Police budgets are taxpayer money. Even if cutting a budget meant laying off officers, there's reason to think that would create problems - the needs of the community wouldn't be reduced, so you'd be having fewer officers doing more, which is both costly (in overtime) and increases fatigue and the likelihood of problematic behavior. And taking it out of the pension fund or otherwise spreading the harm to other officers is both easily gamed and incentivizes cover-ups. It matters who we elect. A significant faction of the U.S. has been convinced that government is simply bad or ineffective, and they vote for people who deliberately prove that. But if we want to see change we need to elect people who are willing to go to the mat for the things we support.
  - dna_polymerase 6y ago
    > Market-focused rhetoric over the past decades has made it tempting to think we can just allocate payments the right way to accomplish what we want. This is one case where that fails. Instead, we need leadership. No, we don't. We need a system at rewards good behaviour and punishes bad. The market solution is really the best. A solution bound on a single leader vanishes as soon as the leader goes. > It matters who we elect. Things were bad during Obama's reign, as they were under Trump. Biden won't bring change, unless systemic change will be implemented.
    - GavinMcG 6y ago
      Why focus on presidential elections when we're talking about policing? It matters who we elect at the local level. I think your knee-jerk focus on who the president is (and denying the possibility of change) demonstrates what I was saying: the rhetoric has convinced people that it doesn't matter and it's all some national team sport. That's just not true.
      - alentist 6y ago
        Did you reply to the wrong comment? Your (knee-jerk?) characterization is the opposite of what that comment is saying.
- tehwebguy 6y ago
  This sounds good but the only way to actually fix the problem is to hold individual police officers criminally liable. Currently they avoid criminal liability in a number of ways: - They are never arrested - other police simply fail to arrest them - They are never indicted - DAs across the country are extremely reluctant to press charges - Charges are dropped by grand juries - in some states, like NY, all felonies must be confirmed or dropped by a grand jury unless the defendant waived their right. A DA has full power to effectively force a drop by portraying a weak case to a completely secret grand jury, publicly washing their hands of the decision while still getting the result they want. Then, when a DA is elected who actually says they will hold police accountable they often simply will not (as in Jackie Lacey, Los Angeles’ previous DA) or if they make basically any strides toward actually investigating police they will be stonewalled and face a recall with support from the local PD and/or SD (as in LA’s current DA, George Gascon). Police are given unbelievable rights: we will see over and over again that officers with complaints will never actually see them investigated and even sustained complaints have barely any consequences. Additionally if they are implicated in a serious crime on the job they often have union rules barring them from being interviewed / interrogated until after a cooling period (this blew my mind). Compare this to basically any other profession, even so much as yelling at a client or failing to help customer who asked would be a final strike almost anywhere else. The biggest problem may be that the US justice system is so unbelievably cruel that police refuse to ever put one of their own through that type of hell.
  - StreamBright 6y ago
    > to hold individual police officers criminally liable. Under qualified immunity that most police officers have this is not going to happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#Police_brutality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#Police_brut...
    - stefan_ 6y ago
      Qualified immunity is for civil cases, it has nothing to do with criminal.
    - tehwebguy 6y ago
- antattack 6y ago
  That would also increase an incentive to cover-up the misconduct. I think the best first step would be to increase transparency and accountability. For example, large number of cities did not even respond to the FIOA request. Also, I read that many Police misconducts are not even tracked at federal level and civil forfeiture has little oversight.
carlineng 6y ago
This is fantastic. When people ask me "what do data scientists really do?" I am going to send them to this repo and the accompanying article. This looks like a massive effort to send out each FOIA request and then manually process each individual report. At the end of the day, their conclusion has little to do with actually investigating trends about police misconduct, and is almost entirely about standardization of data collection practices.
- uneekname 6y ago
  I'm 21 years old, going to graduate from college in a year, and reading this comment makes me want to pursue this type of data science work. For every school or personal project I've done, the joy for me has been the collecting, organizing, and analyzing of data.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    The world needs more data scientists who actually follow a scientific approach to uncertainty and bias - good luck!
- alexilliamson 6y ago
  Bingo. I worked for 4 years as a data scientist for city governments, and there is so much low hanging fruit to be captured simply with better data management. The analysis/modeling almost feels perfunctory once you have the data system in the state you need.
  - Buttons840 6y ago
    I worked for a company that gathered medical license information from all 50 states into a central source. We gathered the "good lists" and the "bad lists" I liked to say; the license lists and the sanction lists. I heard stories about sanctioned doctors or nurses just moving to another state to continue practicing, though I don't personally know if those stories are true, it's easy to imagine the value of checking all these lists in a central location. The problem is all this data from every state is very very similar, but it's a huge job to gather all this data together. The company was doing a very poor job of it as well, with lots of tech debt and incompetent management. There was lots of legally questionable web scraping and manual work. Many states (shamefully) charge money to be able to see what doctors and nurses have been sanctioned, and actively try to prevent the data from being scraped. All this could be eliminated with a federally mandated data format. That entire company of 300 people could be automated away easily. While I was working there I was always aware that part of everyone's high medical bill ended up in my paycheck: the hospitals and clinics paid this company, and the company paid me.
hedora 6y ago
Settlements are something, but don’t address the root cause: > But despite increased attention, it’s still rare for police officers to face criminal prosecution.
- cb504 6y ago
  Consider making every criminal complaint against a police officer a federal case to be investigated by the FBI. Take it out of state and local hands.
williesleg 6y ago
I love how police don't help the honest people anymore. Just turn it in to your insurance.
tehwebguy 6y ago
It’s interesting to see that a number of these cities failed to respond with data whatsoever. If you wanna take a look at some day today operations of an attorney whose focus is suing agencies that refuse to respond to FOIA requests follow Beth Bourdon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bethbourdon https://twitter.com/bethbourdon Often the threat of a FOIA suit is enough. It’s funny to see some agencies say, “this would be way too burdensome” or “your cost will be several thousand dollars” until they realize they’ll have to explain that to a judge and then the data is suddenly trivial to provide in a few days.
- ipsin 6y ago
  Isn't FOIA something that applies only to federal agencies? Many states also have similar "sunshine laws", but I didn't think there was a nationwide mandate for all governments at all levels.
  - the_only_law 6y ago
    I worked briefly in a state agency and I recall during a presentation of an application we developed, my boss noting t hat the users should be careful what they enter into certain fields due to FOIA.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    Most states have their own FOIA enacted.
  - tsaoutourpants 6y ago
    Every state has their own public records law that allows for requests similar to FOIA.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  I've heard even worse. Of course, it's all hearsay, but I was told a story of targeted harassment due to someone trying to FOIA a department.
njharman 6y ago
Police unions should pay part of settlements. Say half. (Employer, the city, should be accountable too) The union and police themselves will fix misconduct when it costs them money. Currently they have little incentive to not use maximal force. And lots of incentive to be maximal, this may be the 1 in 100 people with intent and means to kill a cop and if I'm soft or lax I may be that cop.
- ch4s3 6y ago
  It’s interesting because their trading stresses the idea that any encounter could be deadly, even though it’s far from true. Policing in the US barely cracks the list of the top 15 most dangerous jobs. In fact the top two killers of on duty officers are car crashes and heart attacks. Random accidents and friendly fire also rank highly. Their mistaken beliefs about the dangers of random encounters definitely incentivize bad behavior.
  - upbeat_general 6y ago
    Source for that data (on the leading causes of death for police officers)? Most things I could find show that more officers are shot than get into car crashes (tho it’s a close second). The exception being COVID-19 for the past year. I think you are right that they are not high up on the most dangerous jobs though I’d argue it still makes sense to fear deadly encounters the same way loggers should very much fear being crushed by a tree. I do however agree that this fear is taken far past what is rational though which does result in a lot of bad behavior.
    - ch4s3 6y ago
      I think it depends on the year and how they account for the deaths. Most of the gun death stats seem to include suicides and accidental shootings by other officers. I actually don’t think the should be trained to fear deadly encounters, I believe they should be trained to assess risk and deescalate.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
      In general (pre-covid), it seems like of the officers who die in the line of duty, a little less than half had accidental deaths and a little more than half had felonious deaths. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2019-statistics-on-law-enforcement-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release... I recall reading about the heart attack stat too, but I can't remember where it was from. It could account for the number of officers who died from heart attacks while off duty too. Regardless, the amount of time, effort, and attention paid to the possibility of a felonious death seems out of proportion to the amount time, effort, and attention paid to accidental deaths, even though accidental deaths are almost as likely to occur.
fireattack 6y ago
How are cities selected (I meant by the author, I knew some didn't reply)? Noticeably there is no single Texas city.
JarlUlvi 6y ago
A big problem with this data is quite simple. Legal defense is expensive, and time consuming. Due to the cost of an expensive defense, and a potential large settlement, defendants with alot to lose are incented to settle for a small payout, rather than go to trial. This is whether or not there was actually misconduct. This is the same rationale used for corporations settling lawsuits, rather than defending them. Merely the cost of defense with having a corporate lawyer defending said corporation can be prohibitive. Better a small settlement than dragging out a defense. Medical malpractice lawyers vs ambulance chaser lawyers can treat it the same way for that matter.
RickJWagner 6y ago
Friday a cop was murdered at a traffic stop [1]. The same day a cop was killed working security at a high school basketball game [2]. We need a publicity machine to remind people that cops do many positive things and pay great sacrifices. [1] https://www.whsv.com/2021/02/28/community-members-come-together-to-honor-officer-nick-winum/ https://www.whsv.com/2021/02/28/community-members-come-toget... [2] https://www.nola.com/news/article_1697430a-7953-11eb-a434-7766714dec15.html https://www.nola.com/news/article_1697430a-7953-11eb-a434-77...
- csb6 6y ago
  > We need a publicity machine to remind people that cops do many positive things and pay great sacrifices. This is the status quo. The Internet is full of these stories; the front page of reddit, for example, almost always has a GIF of a cop doing a kickflip for some kids or helping an old lady cross the street or something. Turn on the local news; cops are universally praised and shown to be the "good guys" fighting criminals and keeping us safe. Nearly every TV show or movie has cops as the good guys, or at least not the bad guys. Football games will show cops on the jumbotron during the national anthem, and public figures regularly praise police for their supposed sacrifices for everyone's safety. What more propaganda could you possibly want? The mainstream narrative in all forms of mass media is that cops are the good guys. Even on social media there is a lot of reluctance to admit that the police are systematically discriminatory and militarized. The fact of the matter is that policing is a brutal, discriminatory system and always has been, and people have begun to accept this much more openly than in the past.
  - RickJWagner 6y ago
    I disagree. When the cops shoot somebody or kneel on their neck, it dominates the news cycle. Cop-does-good-deed is in tiny headlines. Cop commits some crime is big news.
florin_g 6y ago
Here is The Free Thought Project regarding police abuse. Story after story of misconduct. Sad. https://thefreethoughtproject.com https://thefreethoughtproject.com

221 points by IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

jron 6y ago

The data was used for this article: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/police-misconduct-costs-cities-millions-every-year-but-thats-where-the-accountability-ends/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/police-misconduct-costs...

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

Might be useful to add to the title "based on FOIA requests for 50 cities in USA", or at the very least add "(USA)".

jakelazaroff 6y ago

There’s a simple way to effect change at the legislative level: force cities to pay for police misconduct settlements out of existing police budgets and pension funds, rather than apportioning taxpayer money to do so.

alostpuppy 6y ago
I like that idea.
pavel_lishin 6y ago
Is there any reason to believe they won't up the budget to account for this?
- curryst 6y ago
  I don't think cities can run a deficit. They would have to pass tax increases to fund that, which would be unpopular.
  - yonig 6y ago
    Hello from Chicago
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > I don't think cities can run a deficit. Lol
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      In Alberta (and perhaps elsewhere in Canada), cities are legally not allowed to run deficits.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        New York City is running a budget deficit of $5,250,000,000.
  - mark212 6y ago
    You’re right for cities and counties (and the state itself) in California. None are allowed to operate at a deficit, hence the creation of the state “rainy day fund” by Gov. Brown after the 2008 recession which has worked very well in tempering the current fiscal issues in the Covid pandemic, at least at the state level.
  - zamfi 6y ago
    > They would have to pass tax increases to fund that Or reallocate money previously allocated to libraries, social workers, community colleges, public transportation, etc. etc.
  - pavel_lishin 6y ago
    Any reason they wouldn't move the budget away from other services?
chrisseaton 6y ago
> force cities to pay for police misconduct settlements out of existing police budgets and pension funds, rather than apportioning taxpayer money to do so Err that is taxpayer money? Police budgets aren't the police's personal money. They don't care if you take it away it's no problem for them as long as they're still being paid.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  Take it from their pension (and cut their budgets). Yes, that's wasted taxpayer money but I'm sure the police also view it as their own personal money.
  - xupybd 6y ago
    What if that happened in your company? Another person's misconduct resulted in you getting your pension drained?
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      I don’t have a pension.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        Pension / retirement fund, whatever.
        solosoyokaze 6y ago
        There's a big difference. Pensions are paid by the employer and retirement accounts are paid by the employee. Excessive benefits aside, the culture of the police is rotten and policing in the US needs to be rethought from the ground up.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > There's a big difference. Pensions are paid by the employer and retirement accounts are paid by the employee. You make it sound like you're paid more if you get a pension! If the company pays into a pension for or gives you the money which you then pay into a pension... guess what it's the same money just a slightly different setup. I've got a pension I pay into myself, so it doesn't need to be your employer which does it.
damagednoob 6y ago
> out of existing police budgets and pension funds So the incentive here is: I better keep tabs on my partner or else I'll lose some of my pension Or I better cover for my partner or else I'll lose some of my pension. I don't think this is the solution you think it is.
- taxidump 6y ago
  With little to no repercussions financially to the department or employee and no major career punishments, what do you propose instead?
  - wonderwonder 6y ago
    Force individual officers to carry liability insurance similar to malpractice insurance for lawyers and doctors. If the insurance is forced to pay out a couple times the officer would be uninsurable and thus unemployable.
    - threatofrain 6y ago
      But is that accompanied with officers being exposed to individual liability? And removing qualified immunity? Because that would be the bigger argument.
    - opo 6y ago
      This is suggested quite often, but no one is going to sell you a liability policy to protect you from committing crimes. When police officers commit blatant misconduct the officers involved should at least be fired and criminal charges should be applied to them if applicable. This is how it works for every other job, not sure why police should be different.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    Limit qualified immunity and require officers to carry personal liability insurance on the job. Increase police training requirements. They're woefully undertrained in the US (at least relative to Germany and several other Western European nations). National LEO registration or something similar to stop the movement of bad officers from one department to another.
GavinMcG 6y ago
Market-focused rhetoric over the past decades has made it tempting to think we can just allocate payments the right way to accomplish what we want. This is one case where that fails. Instead, we need leadership. Police budgets are taxpayer money. Even if cutting a budget meant laying off officers, there's reason to think that would create problems - the needs of the community wouldn't be reduced, so you'd be having fewer officers doing more, which is both costly (in overtime) and increases fatigue and the likelihood of problematic behavior. And taking it out of the pension fund or otherwise spreading the harm to other officers is both easily gamed and incentivizes cover-ups. It matters who we elect. A significant faction of the U.S. has been convinced that government is simply bad or ineffective, and they vote for people who deliberately prove that. But if we want to see change we need to elect people who are willing to go to the mat for the things we support.
- dna_polymerase 6y ago
  > Market-focused rhetoric over the past decades has made it tempting to think we can just allocate payments the right way to accomplish what we want. This is one case where that fails. Instead, we need leadership. No, we don't. We need a system at rewards good behaviour and punishes bad. The market solution is really the best. A solution bound on a single leader vanishes as soon as the leader goes. > It matters who we elect. Things were bad during Obama's reign, as they were under Trump. Biden won't bring change, unless systemic change will be implemented.
  - GavinMcG 6y ago
    Why focus on presidential elections when we're talking about policing? It matters who we elect at the local level. I think your knee-jerk focus on who the president is (and denying the possibility of change) demonstrates what I was saying: the rhetoric has convinced people that it doesn't matter and it's all some national team sport. That's just not true.
    - alentist 6y ago
      Did you reply to the wrong comment? Your (knee-jerk?) characterization is the opposite of what that comment is saying.
tehwebguy 6y ago
This sounds good but the only way to actually fix the problem is to hold individual police officers criminally liable. Currently they avoid criminal liability in a number of ways: - They are never arrested - other police simply fail to arrest them - They are never indicted - DAs across the country are extremely reluctant to press charges - Charges are dropped by grand juries - in some states, like NY, all felonies must be confirmed or dropped by a grand jury unless the defendant waived their right. A DA has full power to effectively force a drop by portraying a weak case to a completely secret grand jury, publicly washing their hands of the decision while still getting the result they want. Then, when a DA is elected who actually says they will hold police accountable they often simply will not (as in Jackie Lacey, Los Angeles’ previous DA) or if they make basically any strides toward actually investigating police they will be stonewalled and face a recall with support from the local PD and/or SD (as in LA’s current DA, George Gascon). Police are given unbelievable rights: we will see over and over again that officers with complaints will never actually see them investigated and even sustained complaints have barely any consequences. Additionally if they are implicated in a serious crime on the job they often have union rules barring them from being interviewed / interrogated until after a cooling period (this blew my mind). Compare this to basically any other profession, even so much as yelling at a client or failing to help customer who asked would be a final strike almost anywhere else. The biggest problem may be that the US justice system is so unbelievably cruel that police refuse to ever put one of their own through that type of hell.
- StreamBright 6y ago
  > to hold individual police officers criminally liable. Under qualified immunity that most police officers have this is not going to happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#Police_brutality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#Police_brut...
  - stefan_ 6y ago
    Qualified immunity is for civil cases, it has nothing to do with criminal.
  - tehwebguy 6y ago
antattack 6y ago
That would also increase an incentive to cover-up the misconduct. I think the best first step would be to increase transparency and accountability. For example, large number of cities did not even respond to the FIOA request. Also, I read that many Police misconducts are not even tracked at federal level and civil forfeiture has little oversight.

carlineng 6y ago

This is fantastic. When people ask me "what do data scientists really do?" I am going to send them to this repo and the accompanying article. This looks like a massive effort to send out each FOIA request and then manually process each individual report. At the end of the day, their conclusion has little to do with actually investigating trends about police misconduct, and is almost entirely about standardization of data collection practices.

uneekname 6y ago
I'm 21 years old, going to graduate from college in a year, and reading this comment makes me want to pursue this type of data science work. For every school or personal project I've done, the joy for me has been the collecting, organizing, and analyzing of data.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The world needs more data scientists who actually follow a scientific approach to uncertainty and bias - good luck!
alexilliamson 6y ago
Bingo. I worked for 4 years as a data scientist for city governments, and there is so much low hanging fruit to be captured simply with better data management. The analysis/modeling almost feels perfunctory once you have the data system in the state you need.
- Buttons840 6y ago
  I worked for a company that gathered medical license information from all 50 states into a central source. We gathered the "good lists" and the "bad lists" I liked to say; the license lists and the sanction lists. I heard stories about sanctioned doctors or nurses just moving to another state to continue practicing, though I don't personally know if those stories are true, it's easy to imagine the value of checking all these lists in a central location. The problem is all this data from every state is very very similar, but it's a huge job to gather all this data together. The company was doing a very poor job of it as well, with lots of tech debt and incompetent management. There was lots of legally questionable web scraping and manual work. Many states (shamefully) charge money to be able to see what doctors and nurses have been sanctioned, and actively try to prevent the data from being scraped. All this could be eliminated with a federally mandated data format. That entire company of 300 people could be automated away easily. While I was working there I was always aware that part of everyone's high medical bill ended up in my paycheck: the hospitals and clinics paid this company, and the company paid me.

hedora 6y ago

Settlements are something, but don’t address the root cause: > But despite increased attention, it’s still rare for police officers to face criminal prosecution.

cb504 6y ago
Consider making every criminal complaint against a police officer a federal case to be investigated by the FBI. Take it out of state and local hands.

williesleg 6y ago

I love how police don't help the honest people anymore. Just turn it in to your insurance.

tehwebguy 6y ago

It’s interesting to see that a number of these cities failed to respond with data whatsoever. If you wanna take a look at some day today operations of an attorney whose focus is suing agencies that refuse to respond to FOIA requests follow Beth Bourdon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bethbourdon https://twitter.com/bethbourdon Often the threat of a FOIA suit is enough. It’s funny to see some agencies say, “this would be way too burdensome” or “your cost will be several thousand dollars” until they realize they’ll have to explain that to a judge and then the data is suddenly trivial to provide in a few days.

ipsin 6y ago
Isn't FOIA something that applies only to federal agencies? Many states also have similar "sunshine laws", but I didn't think there was a nationwide mandate for all governments at all levels.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  I worked briefly in a state agency and I recall during a presentation of an application we developed, my boss noting t hat the users should be careful what they enter into certain fields due to FOIA.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  Most states have their own FOIA enacted.
- tsaoutourpants 6y ago
  Every state has their own public records law that allows for requests similar to FOIA.
the_only_law 6y ago
I've heard even worse. Of course, it's all hearsay, but I was told a story of targeted harassment due to someone trying to FOIA a department.

njharman 6y ago

Police unions should pay part of settlements. Say half. (Employer, the city, should be accountable too) The union and police themselves will fix misconduct when it costs them money. Currently they have little incentive to not use maximal force. And lots of incentive to be maximal, this may be the 1 in 100 people with intent and means to kill a cop and if I'm soft or lax I may be that cop.

ch4s3 6y ago
It’s interesting because their trading stresses the idea that any encounter could be deadly, even though it’s far from true. Policing in the US barely cracks the list of the top 15 most dangerous jobs. In fact the top two killers of on duty officers are car crashes and heart attacks. Random accidents and friendly fire also rank highly. Their mistaken beliefs about the dangers of random encounters definitely incentivize bad behavior.
- upbeat_general 6y ago
  Source for that data (on the leading causes of death for police officers)? Most things I could find show that more officers are shot than get into car crashes (tho it’s a close second). The exception being COVID-19 for the past year. I think you are right that they are not high up on the most dangerous jobs though I’d argue it still makes sense to fear deadly encounters the same way loggers should very much fear being crushed by a tree. I do however agree that this fear is taken far past what is rational though which does result in a lot of bad behavior.
  - ch4s3 6y ago
    I think it depends on the year and how they account for the deaths. Most of the gun death stats seem to include suicides and accidental shootings by other officers. I actually don’t think the should be trained to fear deadly encounters, I believe they should be trained to assess risk and deescalate.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
    In general (pre-covid), it seems like of the officers who die in the line of duty, a little less than half had accidental deaths and a little more than half had felonious deaths. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2019-statistics-on-law-enforcement-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release... I recall reading about the heart attack stat too, but I can't remember where it was from. It could account for the number of officers who died from heart attacks while off duty too. Regardless, the amount of time, effort, and attention paid to the possibility of a felonious death seems out of proportion to the amount time, effort, and attention paid to accidental deaths, even though accidental deaths are almost as likely to occur.

fireattack 6y ago

How are cities selected (I meant by the author, I knew some didn't reply)? Noticeably there is no single Texas city.

JarlUlvi 6y ago

A big problem with this data is quite simple. Legal defense is expensive, and time consuming. Due to the cost of an expensive defense, and a potential large settlement, defendants with alot to lose are incented to settle for a small payout, rather than go to trial. This is whether or not there was actually misconduct. This is the same rationale used for corporations settling lawsuits, rather than defending them. Merely the cost of defense with having a corporate lawyer defending said corporation can be prohibitive. Better a small settlement than dragging out a defense. Medical malpractice lawyers vs ambulance chaser lawyers can treat it the same way for that matter.

RickJWagner 6y ago

Friday a cop was murdered at a traffic stop [1]. The same day a cop was killed working security at a high school basketball game [2]. We need a publicity machine to remind people that cops do many positive things and pay great sacrifices. [1] https://www.whsv.com/2021/02/28/community-members-come-together-to-honor-officer-nick-winum/ https://www.whsv.com/2021/02/28/community-members-come-toget... [2] https://www.nola.com/news/article_1697430a-7953-11eb-a434-7766714dec15.html https://www.nola.com/news/article_1697430a-7953-11eb-a434-77...

csb6 6y ago
> We need a publicity machine to remind people that cops do many positive things and pay great sacrifices. This is the status quo. The Internet is full of these stories; the front page of reddit, for example, almost always has a GIF of a cop doing a kickflip for some kids or helping an old lady cross the street or something. Turn on the local news; cops are universally praised and shown to be the "good guys" fighting criminals and keeping us safe. Nearly every TV show or movie has cops as the good guys, or at least not the bad guys. Football games will show cops on the jumbotron during the national anthem, and public figures regularly praise police for their supposed sacrifices for everyone's safety. What more propaganda could you possibly want? The mainstream narrative in all forms of mass media is that cops are the good guys. Even on social media there is a lot of reluctance to admit that the police are systematically discriminatory and militarized. The fact of the matter is that policing is a brutal, discriminatory system and always has been, and people have begun to accept this much more openly than in the past.
- RickJWagner 6y ago
  I disagree. When the cops shoot somebody or kneel on their neck, it dominates the news cycle. Cop-does-good-deed is in tiny headlines. Cop commits some crime is big news.

florin_g 6y ago

Here is The Free Thought Project regarding police abuse. Story after story of misconduct. Sad. https://thefreethoughtproject.com https://thefreethoughtproject.com