America can’t afford police abuses and police killings

By FinalCall.com News | Last updated: Feb 12, 2015 - 10:02:55 AM

Photos: Haroon Rajaee

Last year the deaths of Black males and the failures of grand juries to indict helped spawn demands for justice, street demonstrations and a mass movement not seen in a generation or two.

The failure to hold police officers accountable perpetuates an over militarized, shoot-from-the-hip and occupying army mentality and tactics used by those who are supposed to be devoted to service and protection.

Black America suffers disproportionately from stops, arrests, abuses, beatings, and deaths at the hands of police officers. But this disease takes other tolls on the nation and its citizens. The soul of a nation is corrupted when police can run roughshod over people and suffer no consequences. Officers are hardly ever investigated, charged, indicted or convicted.

There is a financial price to pay when cops are out of control. That tab seems to be getting heavier as states, cities and small towns grapple with budget shortfalls, fewer services, shuttered schools and America’s quality of life plunges ever downward.

Millions are paid out each year in settlements and judgments when officers are not charged with crimes—let alone convicted.

Just in time for Black History Month, California agreed to pay out $2.5 million to a Black motorist shot by a White police officer. The settlement in the excessive force lawsuit was reached just as the trial started in the case. The man was shot eight times by a California Highway Patrol officer during a traffic stop.

The officer testified that the motorist exited his car and charged, shouting threats. That might have been hard to do, since physical evidence showed four shots to the 37-year-old Black man’s back.

New York is paying out $3.9 million for the 2012 police shooting of Bronx teen Ramarley Graham, killed by a White cop in his family’s small bathroom. Then there is the $41 million settlement with the Central Park Five, Black and Latino males wrongly convicted and jailed for a 1989 rape of a White female jogger and “wilding” spree in Central Park.

The maddening and disgusting death of Eric Garner, who died in a chokehold last year, has the city of New York already considering a lawsuit settlement. Mr. Garner’s family is suing the city for $75 million. The state comptroller, who reportedly is looking to play a role in the Garner case, has worked out major settlements in two cases. One was $6.4 million for a man who served 23 years for a murder he didn’t commit and $2.3 million to the family of a Black man who baked to death in a cell on Riker’s Island.

The problem of police abuse, police killings and police misconduct clearly stretches from coast to coast. “The city of Los Angeles just spent $1.5 million on a single case of a California Highway Patrol officer beating a Black woman senseless at a traffic stop. San Diego paid $5.9 million to compensate for sexual assault against multiple women by one officer. A city southwest of Tucson spent $3.4 million to cover a deadly 2011 SWAT raid. Boston settled a single case of brutality for $1.4 million that left a man with permanent brain injury and Scottsdale, Arizona paid $4.25 million for the fatal shooting of an unarmed man,” reported TheAntiMedia.org.

“The city of Baltimore has paid $5.7 million in settlements and an additional $5.8 million in legal fees for police brutality. This is trivial compared to other cities. Minneapolis has paid $21 million since 2003. Oakland paid $74 million from 1990 to present and Los Angeles shelled out $54 million in 2011 alone. Chicago paid $521 million over the last decade, with $84.6 million in 2013 (including court and legal fees).

“As costly to taxpayers around the country as these vicious city police forces can be, nothing compares to the most notorious brutalizer of all: the New York Police Department. New York City spent nearly a billion dollars–$964 million–from 2000 to 2010 (to be fair, including instances like cop car wrecks) and in 2012 alone spent $765 million dollars. The figure does include hospital negligence and property damage in addition to police abuse, but all around demonstrates the inability of government to adequately serve its people. The New York figure is expected to reach $815 million by 2016,” TheAntiMedia.org noted.

“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,” according to a Better Government Association letter published last year in the Chicago Sun-Times.

“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,” the letter said.

Part of Chicago’s problem is a couple decades of police torture under former Police Commander Jon Burge and the damages that have been sought and won related to horrible and life altering actions by officers in the Windy City.

The small suburb of Ferguson, Mo., where the police shooting of Mike Brown and paramilitary response sparked a national movement against police brutality, is facing a $40 million federal lawsuit. Black Lawyers for Justice leader Malik Shabazz says peaceful demonstrators were beaten, tear gassed, pepper sprayed, shot with non-lethal projectiles and suffered rights violations in the aftermath of protests following the unarmed 18-year-old’s death.

The failure of police departments and prosecutors to punish errant officers leave cops with little reason to stop beating, shooting and violating rights. Taxpayers foot the bill.

But there are other reasons emerging that make reining in rouge cops necessary and imperative right now. It appears as if some are going beyond the slogan heard on the streets of St. Louis, “Hands Up! Shoot Back!” following the police killing of a disturbed man with a small knife last year. The Associated Press reported Feb. 3, “A Washington state man pleaded guilty Monday to a single felony count of making an interstate threat against the life of a former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer after an unarmed Black teenager was shot and killed.

“Two other counts are set to be dismissed at sentencing June 12. The man tried to buy a gun on Facebook, telling the seller he was ‘going to Ferguson,’ apparently to seek revenge on Darren Wilson, the federal complaint said. Then-Officer Wilson fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9 in a shooting that touched off protests around the country.”

Out-of-control cops push an already tense society closer to the point of anarchy. Political leaders—presidents, congressmen, state lawmakers and mayors—can ignore this peril. Ignoring this crisis won’t make it go away, but it could push the country over the edge.

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