Giving Compass' Take:

• Brentin Mock reveals how cities allocate millions of dollars of taxpayers' money towards the legal cost of police violence as opposed to improving marginalized communities.

• What are you doing to address racialized police brutality? How does the cost of police violence represent another of the many injustices perpetrated against marginalized communities? How can you help reduce that cost?

• Learn more about how you can use your platform to support Black Life Protests.

The triple-combination shock of pandemic, social unrest, and potential police legal fees seen in Minneapolis could very likely be the future many cities will face, especially those that have a history of police violence. Add in the additional shock of climate change — floods, hurricanes, torrential winds — in a city already pummeled by the public health crisis and riots, and a city could find itself critically underwater, financially and otherwise. Storms, disease outbreaks, and other acts of nature are unpredictable; but the costs of police violence are much more manageable to rein in on the front end.

In Minneapolis, a metro that has been plagued by several other prominent police brutality incidents in recent years, there are actions the city could have taken but weren’t. The Minneapolis police union blocked the city from incorporating new reforms for the police department — including new rules for the deployment of neck restraints, as was used to kill Floyd.

Instead, cities like Minneapolis make taxpayers pay for police violence on the back end, after a police officer has already injured or killed a civilian, and after he’s been tried or the case has been settled. This is true for most large cities, where the legal costs for defending police are usually paid out of the city’s own general funds, or through issuing bonds, either way paid with taxpayer funds. Cities are effectively using their residents to mortgage police violence — a proposition that may grow less and less palatable as families’ finances are depleted by other circulating disasters.

Police reform advocates argue that the money from these police lawsuit bonds — along with outsized police budgets — would be better used for fixing infrastructure, schools, and hospitals in black and low-income communities.

Read the full article about the cost of police violence by Brentin Mock at CityLab.