Minneapolis accounts for $136 million of $160 million in MN police misconduct claims in 10 years, according to report

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
·5 min read
23

When a police officer is sued for misconduct, it’s typically their employer — generally the city, county or state — who pays out legal damages or settlement funds to close the claim, as opposed to the officer or police department. That’s left between one-fourth and one-third of all government bodies in Minnesota on the hook for more than $160 million in largely taxpayer-funded payouts over a 10-year period, according to a recent report.

The vast majority of those dollars originated in one city — Minneapolis — that alone paid out $136 million, or nearly 85% of the statewide total. St. Paul paid out $4.2 million in the same time period, almost half of which was attributed to a single incident involving St. Paul Police and a police canine.

Those sums are from a first-of-its-kind report authored by David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline University in St. Paul. In an accompanying spreadsheet, the 17-page report tallies 495 incidents of alleged misconduct from January 2010 through December 2020, many of which resulted in civil cases that never went to trial before being settled with cash payments.

“I neither consider this report to be pro-police or anti-police,” said Schultz, in an interview Tuesday. “But the contrast between St. Paul and Minneapolis is pretty dramatic. The hard numbers give us a better picture of that.”

The report and supporting data have not been peer-reviewed and were self-published on a website of selected works that Schultz maintains at works.bepress.com/david_schultz.

Payouts

Overall, the report found that Minneapolis had 177 incidents that resulted in payouts, Bloomington had 126, St. Paul had 47, Washington County had 21, Ramsey County had nine and the rest of the state had 115.

The $136 million in payouts in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, do not include the additional $27 million that the city agreed to pay in March 2021 — three months outside the scope of the study — to settle the lawsuits that followed Floyd’s death.

“Minneapolis is contesting the numbers,” said Schultz on Tuesday. He added that the Minneapolis data was pulled from the city website. “I triple-checked the numbers. My assistant did it twice, and I went back and checked it several months ago.”

In all, 29% of government bodies in Minnesota issued some form of payment in response to allegations of officer misconduct during the 10 years in question.

It took Schultz and his students two years to compile the data, using 239 public records requests targeted to cities, counties, the University of Minnesota Police Department, the Metropolitan Council — which oversees Metro Transit’s police department — and the Minnesota State Patrol.

Of the 239 data requests, all the local governments surveyed eventually responded, with 71 government bodies indicating some form of payout. They ranged from $175 to effectively reimburse a claimant who said Bloomington police destroyed his property while executing a search warrant, to $2 million to resolve a reported assault involving a St. Paul Police canine.

The smallest sum that changed hands was $19.42 for a claim in Richfield, though the type of claim was not specified in the data the city provided. In fact, 40% of all the payouts in the report had no data attached specifying what type of incident inspired the claim, and 88% of those unspecified incidents were in Minneapolis.

“Part of what we found fascinating was we don’t have a certain level of detail — race, gender of the people involved and the factual situation that led to the problem,” Schultz said. “What I would like to know from a policy perspective is what happened in those 495 situations where there was a payout for misused police authority? That might tell us what we need to focus on so we don’t have those possible abuses. I can’t tell you these were all about race, or all involved weapons or drugs.”

Otherwise, damage to property and excessive use of force were among the most common specified claims, followed by misuse of private data/violations of the Minnesota Data Practices Act.

Taxpayer funds

It’s unclear what percentage of claims in the report were paid through a third-party insurer, as some municipalities are self-insured and use taxpayer funds to pay settlements.

“The logic of municipal or governmental responsibility for police officer behavior is simple: If governments have to make payouts for police misconduct there would be a financial incentive to reform police departments,” the report notes. “Unfortunately, as argued elsewhere, this ‘reform or pay strategy’ has had mixed results.”

Schultz wrote in his report that there is no national database on government or taxpayer payouts for police misconduct. However, a survey of 15 large U.S. cities from 2010 to 2020 indicated they alone paid out $2.26 billion. New York, for instance, pays out roughly $100 million annually to settle claims, Schultz said, which has been more or less accepted as a “cost of doing business” and incorporated into the city budget.

“The data gathering and reporting here was incomplete at best, but it offered a picture of what taxpayers are spending to pay for police misconduct,” he wrote.

Dan Greensweig, administrator of the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust, noted that most cities outside of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth buy police liability insurance through the league’s pooled trust.

“For the most part, most cities in the state, the payouts are coming from that trust,” said Greensweig in an interview. “A higher number of claims, you’ll generally see higher premiums. Police liability is also based on how many sworn officers you have. That’s kind of the proxy for the exposure you see in a given community.”

Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth are notable exceptions as they’re either fully or largely self-insured when it comes to police claims.

Related Articles