Andy Shaw
In Chicago, the term “police
brutality” is inextricably linked to former Cmdr. Jon Burge’s sadistic South
Side homicide squad, which imposed extreme measures, including torture, to
extract false confessions from dozens of suspects.
Burge’s “Midnight Crew” may be
the most visible symbol of excessive force, but from a legal and fiscal
standpoint they’re actually a relatively small part of a shockingly pervasive
citywide problem uncovered by a Better Government Association investigation the
Sun-Times published a week ago.
Brutality-related lawsuits have
cost Chicago taxpayers $521 million over the last decade — that’s more than
half a billion dollars — and Burge’s team accounts only for about 15 percent of
that staggering figure.
In 2013 alone, the city paid
out $84.6 million in settlements, judgments, legal fees and other expenses,
more than triple the budgeted amount.
That’s a huge expenditure for a
city with billions of dollars in unfunded pension obligations, and a budget
crisis severe enough to force mental health clinic shutdowns, reduced library
hours and higher fees for water, parking and other services.
We’re not suggesting victims of
police brutality don’t deserve to be compensated — in some cases no amount of
money can make up for ruined lives and lost loved ones — but at a time when
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is contemplating painful tax and fee increases to deal with
the pension crisis, the budget impact of police misconduct is huge.
The half-billion spent on these
cases could have built five state-of-the-art high schools and more than 30
libraries, repaved 500 miles of arterial streets, or paid off a big chunk of
the pension bill.
An Emanuel spokesman says the
city is dealing with the problem of excessive force by expanding police
training, and hoping to discourage lawsuits by taking more cases to trial
instead of settling out of court.
Obviously, the mayor doesn’t
want alleged victims to view City Hall as an ATM, but with nearly 500
misconduct-related cases still pending, the image is unavoidable, and more
seven-figure payouts seem inevitable.
Chicago, sadly, is beating the
competition in a race it doesn’t want to win.
Los Angeles, which has a
similar-sized police force, paid out $20 million in brutality-related legal
claims last year, less than a quarter of Chicago’s outlay.
The last time Chicago spent
less than that was $18.5 million in 2005.
Philadelphia, with a force half
the size of Chicago’s, shelled out $9 million.
New York City’s last available
payout figure is $152 million, almost double last year’s Chicago number, but
its population and police force are three times as large.
Just to be clear, many
brutality claims are fabricated, and most of Chicago’s 12,500 cops do good work
and never face misconduct charges, despite the violence they confront on a
daily basis in too many neighborhoods.
But criminal justice experts
say the department has deep-seated problems, including a tendency to circle the
wagons and protect officers who misbehave, a reluctance to punish serial
brutalizers, and a “code of silence” that encourages cops not to report rogue
colleagues.
Until that culture changes,
experts say, bad behavior will continue, and so will super-sized payments to
victims and lawyers.
Silence may be golden in some
places.
But when it enables police
misconduct, it’s intolerable, unaffordable and in desperate need of major
reform.