Police brutality, rogue cops costing cities millions

By Charlene Muhammad
Special to the NNPA
from the Final Call
Part 1 of 2

Editor’s note: The following is the first part of a two-part series on the high cost of police brutality in America supplied to NNPA newspapers around the country by the Final Call. The original article was presented as a single piece, but we have chosen to publish it in two parts because of its length.

LOS ANGELES (NNPA)— Abusive cops are costing already cash-strapped cities across the U.S. millions of dollars in settlements, but civil rights activists and attorneys warn that the payouts will continue unless the criminal justice system begins to prosecute its outof- control officers.

“Obviously we are in a major budget crisis, which has personally affected me,” said author, activist and syndicated columnist Dr. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, referring to a local community college Spanish class he had signed up for, but was cancelled due to state budget cuts.

“Already within a space of three months we’ve seen how this crisis has gotten bigger and bigger and people are hurt by this. This is not just some abstract numbers, but this affects real peoples’ lives. We’ve seen how it affects healthcare, education, welfare, and jobs—whether public or private— public services, DMV, mental health facilities and processing job applications. There is real pain and suffering,” Dr. Hutchinson said.

On Feb. 4, the Los Angeles City Council authorized a $12.85 million settlement to demonstrators who were injured when officers from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) used excessive force to break up a peaceful May Day rally in MacArthur Park last year. More than 300 claims were filed against the city.

That same day in Oakland, Attorney John Burris filed a $1.5 million claim against the Bay Area Rapid Transit District and former transit officer Johannes Mehserle. Mehserle shot and killed 22-yearold Oscar Grant III in the back while he had apparently been subdued.

Burris filed the claim on behalf of five others who were with Grant that New Year’s Day and alleged that they were also abused by BART police.

On Jan. 28, the L.A. City Council also approved a $20.5 million settlement for four LAPD officers who charged that they were wrongfully prosecuted during the 1990s Rampart corruption scandal. But, previous settlements to Rampart victims of police misconduct totaled about $75.5 million. The notorious scandal was uncovered when Rafael Perez, a member of the CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) Gang Unit, testified as a police informant that he and other officers often falsely accused and framed gang members for crimes.

“Cities and counties around the nation are hurting badly, but is that to say that it’s going to make the LAPD any better in terms of how they police, hire and promote in terms of more minority sensitive? I don’t think so. I just think it’s going to increase the liability of taxpayers,” Dr. Hutchinson said.

If cities have to pay $12 million settlements, they simply rob Peter to pay Paul, he said.

“They will pull the money from somewhere else, library, park, playground service hours. They’ll find it by not funding after school nutrition programs. It has a rippling effect and it is caused by a mandated court order,” Dr. Hutchinson said.

According to the non-partisan California Budget Project, which works to improve “public policies affecting the economic and social well-being of low- and middle-income Californians,” people who have been and stand to be impacted by the current statewide budget crisis include:

• 1,544,710 public school students, due to cuts to five of the largest funding allocations;
• 66,140 low-income children dropped from the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids Program;
• 418,840 low-income seniors and persons with disabilities who would lose the state cost-of-living adjustment for Supplemental Security Income/State Supplementary Payment cash assistance grants;
• 61,590 low-income children in 2008-09—and a total of 112,140 children by 2009-10 —who would lose Medi-Cal coverage due to increased paperwork requirements; and
• 249,220 children enrolled in the Healthy Families Program, which provides low-cost health coverage for children in low-income working families.

In Chicago the mayor has put city employees on unpaid leave to help fill a budget shortfall. But a little over a year ago, Chicago officials agreed to pay $19.8 million to four men who suffered police torture under then-commander Jon Burge. Some $30 million has been spent to settle assorted lawsuits connected with the case, which stretches back to abuses during the 1980s and 1990s. Mayor Richard Daley proposed a two-to-three day furlough for more than 4,000 nonunion workers to ease the city’s budgetary crisis.

The $30 million payout doesn’t count millions of dollars spent defending Burge after he was fired by the police department in 1993, said a staffer at the People’s Law Office, which has represented torture victims. City attorneys and private attorneys were paid to defend a man whose firing bore witness to his guilt, said the staffer. This doesn’t even count the human toll, which is worse, because of how blacks, Latinos and the poor are abused by officers, said the staffer.

Current budget problems might cause taxpayers to take a look at how their money is spent, but in Chicago $18 million was paid to the family of LaTanya Haggerty, a black woman shot to death by police in 1999. In 1995, a New York Times editorial noted that in the “cash-starved” Big Apple, brutality settlements and court judgments cost the city $87 million over five years. The Rodney King beating cost Los Angeles $3.8 million in a settlement and estimates for property damage hit $700 million after riots when officers involved were acquitted. In 2001, the city of New York shelled out $7.125 million in the infamous Abner Louima case, in which the Haitian immigrant was assaulted with a plunger by officers in a precinct bathroom.

“This is shameful because right now if you’re already suffering from a $150 million budget deficit and you have three or four huge lawsuits, you have to find that money, so it makes sense to train and educate officers on the front end rather than pay for settlements on the back,” said Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association.

“All their priorities are turned upside down and instead of discouraging more police brutality from occurring, they are basically encouraging it. The money could have been used to offset all of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts,” said John Parker, west coast coordinator of the International Action Center, in Los Angeles. With the exception of the Grant case, it is rare that police officers face any possible penalty for excessive force and misconduct, Parker said.

Police watch groups say that another challenge to police misconduct is being able to track the numerous settlement cases and how they balance with criminal prosecutions of officers.

Next: Hidden payouts in brutality cases and what they cost city budgets and taxpayers.

This is part of the March 11, 2009 online edition of Frost Illustrated.

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