Police Excessive Force Incidents—Impact on Local Government Pocketbooks

In May 2020, the world was shocked by video of a Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer using force sufficient to cause the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, after he was stopped by police investigating him for passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a local convenience store. Mr. Floyd’s death was later determined to have been caused by a combination of the officers’ use of force, the presence of drugs in Mr. Floyd’s system and his underling health conditions. The officers’ force consisted of their pinning him facedown with one officer kneeling on his neck for 9 1/2 minutes while Mr. Floyd begged to be released, stating he could not breathe.ⁱ

The incident led to high-profile murder trials of the police officers involved, most visibly Officer Derek Chauvin, the officer whose knee was on Mr. Floyd’s neck.ⁱⁱ His criminal conviction, along with those of several other officers who took no action to intervene to stop the murder, were considered victories for the justice system. What is not as widely known is that the City of Minneapolis also paid the Floyd family $27 million to settle its civil suit against the city arising from the incident,ⁱⁱⁱ considered the largest pre-trial civil rights settlement in history.

While there has been an increase in the number of incidents involving the use of excessive force by police officers in the news, and while the criminal prosecution of perpetrators of such violence is cathartic to the victims’ families and to the public, the fact is that more and more city and county police departments are paying large settlements in civil rights suits brought against them and their officers because of these incidents. According to a Washington Post investigation this year, based on data collected from 25 of the country’s largest police departments, some 40,000 payments have been made in the last decade in the total amount of $3.2 billion to settle excessive force claims.^iv These settlements are not paid by the officers but rather by the governments involved and their liability insurance carriers. As a result, the cost of law enforcement liability insurance has skyrocketed. Since the federal government has not been able to agree post-Floyd on any criminal justice reform legislation to address the underlying causes of excessive force incidents like the Floyd case, it is hoped that large settlements (some of which have included requirements for police reforms) and the increasingly high costs of liability insurance will have the desired effect of forcing reforms and decreasing the number of incidents in the future.

In addition to the Floyd settlement, some of the most expensive and highest profile lawsuits and settlements arising from excessive force incidents include the following:

Tyre Nichols: In January of this year, an elite unit of the Memphis police department called Scorpion (formed in 2021 to address rising crime rates) pulled over Mr. Nichols (a 29-year-old African American man) for alleged reckless driving and in the process of confronting him, ultimately beat him to death. When body camera video was released, there did not appear to have been probable cause for a reckless driving stop. What was apparent was that the officers aggressively yanked Mr. Nichols from the car upon stopping him, wrestled him to the ground, tased him and made no attempt to interact with him peaceably. The 5 officers involved were all fired and charged with murder and kidnapping.^v Mr. Nichols’ family announced in March of this year that they will sue the Memphis police department for violations of Mr. Nichols’ civil rights.^vi Following news of Mr. Nichols’ death at the hands of the Scorpion unit, others have come forward to complain of similar treatment by the unit with a lawsuit being filed by another victim who survived his encounter but only because the assault was interrupted by bystanders, according to him.^vii The unit has now been deactivated^viii and the county district attorney is looking into other cases involving the unit or its members to determine if those cases are compromised due to the lack of credibility of the officers in question.^ix 

Breonna Taylor: In 2020, the Louisville, KY police department shot and killed Ms. Taylor in a bungled drug raid while attempting to execute a “no knock” warrant on Ms. Taylor’s former boyfriend who police erroneously believed was at her apartment. After Ms. Taylor’s death, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigated the city’s police department and issued a scathing report. In the report, issued in March 2023, the DOJ found that for years the police department had “practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city.” It also reported that because of the department’s misconduct, “the department has paid more than $40 million over the past six years.”^x  The 2020 settlement with the Taylor family was for $12 million and included some agreed upon police reforms such as more oversight by top commanders and mandatory safeguards for executing warrants that were common practice at the time of Ms. Taylor’s death but not followed in her case, and instituting early warning systems to flag officers with excessive force complaints against them.^xi