A new study conducted by students at Hamline University finds Minnesota taxpayers are footing the bill for police misconduct.
Professor David Schultz and his students collected data from 239 county, city, and state government agencies, finding nearly 30% of them made payouts for everything from excessive use of force to property damage.
“One of the things that we found out also is that a lot of the information we would want to know is just not gathered,” Schultz said, highlighting that this includes the race and gender of those reporting offenses.
While Schultz says that 99% of interactions with the police are normal, nearly 500 incidents over 10 years resulted in payouts of more than $160 million, primarily in Minneapolis.
He says while the report is neither pro nor anti-police, he’d like to study those cases to find out what went wrong and perhaps find new ways to improve policing.
“What I would like to know is what happened in those 500,” Schultz said. “Can we find out what happened in those 500 that resulted in something going wrong? Maybe by studying that… we can figure out ways of improving policing.”
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