Post Reports9 Mar 2022

The hidden cost of police misconduct

Today on Post Reports, we explore the hidden cost of police misconduct. Cities around the country spent more than $1.5 billion between 2010 and 2020 to settle claims involving thousands of officers repeatedly accused of misconduct – and often left taxpayers in the dark.

A warning to listeners: Today’s episode of Post Reports includes a story about police violence that may be disturbing to some people, especially animal lovers.

When we hear about lawsuits against police departments, it’s often in cases involving fatal police shootings, like Breonna Taylor’s or George Floyd’s, that result in multimillion-dollar settlements.

“Those cases, they make the headlines, they make the news,” says Washington Post reporter Keith Alexander. “But there are other cases where officers are the subject of numerous lawsuits — 10, 12, 13 — for much smaller offenses, but they're happening repeatedly.”

In a new investigation from The Post, Keith and fellow reporters tallied nearly 40,000 payments made by 25 major cities and counties around the country to settle repeat allegations of misconduct involving thousands of officers. What they found was the hidden cost of police misconduct: the staggering amount that’s been paid over the past decade and the way that taxpayers are often kept in the dark.

Steven Rich and Hannah Thacker contributed to this report. If you want to learn more about how The Post reported on the hidden billion-dollar cost of repeated police misconduct, check out this video.

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