99.8% of the $735 million paid out by in 9,225 large-city police
misconduct settlements came from tax revenues; 0.2% was paid by the
officers who committed the infractions. In more than 80 small/mid-sized
cities studied, police officers contributed nothing to settlements for
their misconduct.
This comes from
Police Indemnification, a paper in
NYU Law Review by Joanna C. Schwartz, an assistant professor at the UCLA Law School.
This Article empirically examines an issue central to judicial and
scholarly debate about civil rights damages actions: whether law
enforcement officials are financially responsible for settlements and
judgments in police misconduct cases. The Supreme Court has long assumed
that law enforcement officers must personally satisfy settlements and
judgments, and has limited individual and government liability in civil
rights damages actions—through qualified immunity doctrine, municipal
liability standards, and limitations on punitive damages—based in part
on this assumption. Scholars disagree about the prevalence of
indemnification: Some believe officers almost always satisfy settlements
and judgments against them, and others contend indemnification is not a
certainty. In this Article, I report the findings of a national study
of police indemnification. Through public records requests, interviews,
and other sources, I have collected information about indemnification
practices in forty-four of the largest law enforcement agencies across
the country, and in thirty-seven small and mid-sized agencies. My study
reveals that police officers are virtually always indemnified: During
the study period, governments paid approximately 99.98% of the dollars
that plaintiffs recovered in lawsuits alleging civil rights violations
by law enforcement. Law enforcement officers in my study never satisfied
a punitive damages award entered against them and almost never
contributed anything to settlements or judgments—even when
indemnification was prohibited by law or policy, and even when officers
were disciplined, terminated, or prosecuted for their conduct. After
describing my findings, this Article considers the implications of
widespread indemnification for qualified immunity, municipal liability,
and punitive damages doctrines; civil rights litigation practice; and
the deterrence and compensation goals of 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
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