Restructuring Civilian Payouts for Police Misconduct

A person is killed by police every 20 hours in the United States. Office‐involved killings have increased about 25% in the past 20 years despite violent crime decreasing. Even more troubling, Blacks are 3.5 times more likely than Whites to be killed by police even when they are not attacking or when they do not have a weapon. Civilian payouts for police misconduct cost local jurisdictions millions of dollars when taxpayer money could be spent in ways that help to close the achievement gap and create jobs. Policy solutions to close this racial gap and improve police‐civilian relations have centered mostly on the implementation of body‐worn cameras and implicit bias trainings. Although beneficial, I argue these policy solutions fall short because they do not address the lack of accountability that police departments have to the communities they serve. In this article, I recommend a restructuring of civilian payouts for police misconduct from taxpayer money to police department insurances. This restructuring will improve police‐civilian relations as well as reduce justifiable homicides and officer‐involved shootings by increasing the accountability that police departments have to the communities they serve.