The Cost of Bad Cops
We can defend good cops by defunding the bad ones.
“I have a great life,” says Louis Scarcella. The retired NYPD detective is a grandfather, a public pensioner and a recent honoree of The N.Y.P.D Retired Detectives Association.
He may have also framed dozens of people for crimes they didn’t commit.
The cost of denying liberty
To date, New York taxpayers have forked up $53 million to settle 13 of detective Scarcella’s wrongful imprisonment cases. For context, this is enough money to fund the entire NYC Veteran’s Services division for nearly a decade.
Scarcella’s misdeeds may ultimately cost taxpayers more than $250 million, notwithstanding the detective’s pension, the price of his victims’ incarceration and the salaries of those who are re-investigating his cases. One bad cop: a quarter of a billion dollars.
Now, consider that 6,120 of the 36,000 active police officers in New York City have received between four and 52 civilian complaints. This group of officers — accused of racism, excessive force and abuse of authority — will ultimately receive more than $13 billion in pension payments from taxpayers. If some of the complaints against this group of officers materialize into lawsuits, it is those same taxpayers who will be on the hook to settle with the victims.
The cost of denying life
Kelly Thomas called out for “Daddy!” before he lost consciousness. The 37-year old homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia was suffocated and beaten to death by six members of the Fullerton Police Department. His broken face was unrecognizable.
The city of Fullerton paid $5.9 million in restitution to Thomas’ family, but none of the officers involved were convicted of any crime. Two of those officers, Jay Cicinelli and Joseph Wolfe, were fired in the following year, but they are suing to get their jobs back, plus retroactive pay*.
Laquan McDonald’s family received $5 million; Philando Castile’s family received $3.8 million; Eric Garner’s family received $5.9 million; Kalief Browder’s family received $3.3 million; Justine Ruszczyk’s family received $18 million — it pains my heart when I admit to myself that there are too many names to list here.
Yet, while the advocates for the dead struggle to have their loved ones’ stories told, there is another group of victims whose stories are almost never told: Those who have suffered life-changing injuries at the hands of the police.
In Feb. 2013, LAPD officers were looking for a male suspect in a gray Nissan Titan; those same officers fired 103 rounds at two women driving a blue Toyota Tacoma. The city settled with those women, one of whom was a 71-year old, shot twice in the back, for $4.2 million.
Unfortunately, the nine pedestrians that NYPD officers accidentally shot while pursuing a suspect a year earlier weren’t as “lucky”: The city of New York denied liability for their rehabilitation.
In any case, it’s the citizens who pay when police officers kill or maim the innocent, accidentally or intentionally.
*Thanks to the efforts of police unions, many officers who were fired — from the Parkland deputy who hid while a gunman murdered students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to the Oakland PD officer who teargassed the people aiding an unconscious veteran — not only get their jobs back, but also receive back-pay, retroactive to the date they were fired. On the other hand, Officer Cariol Horne was abandoned by her union. She stopped another officer from choking a restrained suspect, and as a result, she was fired one year before her retirement. Fifteen years later, she is still fighting to receive her pension.
The cost of denying property
In the United States, police reserve the right to take a person’s car, a person’s home, or even the gold crucifix hanging around a person’s neck — then keep it — until that person can prove that the object in question wasn’t used in a crime. Many Americans don’t even have enough money to file the necessary paperwork to start that process, let alone prove an object’s innocence.
Civil asset forfeiture has become a booming, multi-billion dollar business in the U.S. But, what started as a weapon to fight the War on Drugs has become an easy way to backstop a municipal revenue shortfall, or, to give police a way to line their own pockets.
For example, officers in Hunt County began paying themselves five-figure bonuses from the assets they seized. A small vice squad from Bal Harbour, Florida squandered millions of seized dollars on luxury cars, first-class plane tickets and a beach party.
The State of Texas filed a lawsuit against “One Gold Crucifix,” thereby legalizing the theft of a religious icon, taken from a passing motorist who was assigned no ticket nor charge.
Civil asset forfeiture is a loophole that legalizes theft from U.S. citizens.
Insuring domestic tranquility
Bad cops use violence in response to free speech; they kill innocent Americans who carry licensed firearms; they intrude on people’s homes without warrant; they seize private property without cause; they act as judge, jury and executioner; they hold citizens indefinitely without trial; they kill and maim people for their own amusement; and they routinely deny Americans of their constitutional rights. Bad cops represent the moral and literal bankrupting of America and they insult every good officer who has worn the badge.
I can’t throw my support behind all-or-nothing rallying cries like “Defund the Police” or “Defend the Police,” but I believe that ending qualified immunity, civil asset forfeiture and police unions will save tax dollars, restore trust on both sides, and give good cops the reputation that they deserve.
