Nationwide, local and state politicians often resist reforms to reduce violence committed by police, even though sensible reforms would serve officers and citizens alike.

Now, The Washington Post has revealed such pandering to police unions and law-and-order political myths carries a heavy price of its own.

Using data from 40,000 settlements paid by 25 of the nation’s largest municipal police and sheriffs’ departments, The Post detailed more than $3.2 billion in settlements between 2010 and 2020. The majority of those settlements were for unwarranted violence and, most disturbingly, more than half involved individual officers with multiple complaints.

Philadelphia, over that period, paid $136 million to settle claims, mostly for false arrests and use of excessive force. Six officers in a single narcotics unit generated 173 complaints that the city settled for $6.5 million. Federal authorities charged the officers with theft, wrongful arrest and other civil rights violations. They were acquitted. But the city faces 50 other lawsuits regarding their conduct.

As in most civil settlements, the defendants — police and sheriffs’ departments in these cases — admit no wrongdoing. But without such admissions, police cannot take disciplinary actions against the named officers, putting them back on the street where, too often, they have generated further claims.

Clearly, police and sheriffs’ departments would be better off to put billions of dollars into recruiting, vetting and training rather than in post-confrontation settlements. But that would require politicians publicly to acknowledge the problem rather than relying on settlements to keep things quiet.

— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre (TNS)