Los Angeles County spends a lot of money on litigation:
This is a 212% increase from the year before. Most of it goes to settlements and judgments, and there were three gigantic ones last year:
18 thoughts on “Chart of the day: The cost of bad behavior in LA”
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It's worthwhile to point out the bad actors in government are DISPROPORTIONATELY either Latinos or black----this is something that needs to be discussed.
Black/Latino cops are far more likely to be criminal and corrupt. This is scandalous and needs to be discussed honestly.
Cops, firemen, social workers, teachers, etc. it doesn't matter. The bad actors are often Latinos or blacks.
We're allllll paying.
bad actors in government
trump is white
"trump is white"
Underneath all that orange clown paint, yes.
Please don't feed the racist troll.
Do you have actual statistics to back this claim, or is this just the water cooler talk at your Klan meetings?
????????????
I'm not personally offended by your accusation.
I don't have data with me to back this up, I'm too lazy to put in the effort--------but it's there if you search carefully.
There are two problems with "data" however--there are deliberate efforts to obscure this problem.
The source of my knowledge/belief comes from news stories.
So in other words, you just feel that's the truth, but don't really have anything to prove it, or even suggest it other than your own bigoted assumptions?
Please don't feed the racist troll.
Its probably in proportion to the population....In Florida and LA? Sure. In Minnesota, Lutherans seem to be subject to temptation. In Wisconsin the biggest crooks ARE the R legislators who are a deeply white bunch! People are human across the board.
My in-laws are near East St. Louis. The local paper ALWAYS seems to have a headline about the mayor being prosecuted... it really seems that the only reason people there run for office is to engage in graft ... or at least they can't resist the temptation once in.
While I think taking/releasing pictures of the Kobe Bryant helicopter accident was pretty awful I really don’t get why that was “worth” so much money in civil damages. I knew it happened but didn’t follow it at all. Am I missing something?
Agreed. There should be a way to punish/sanction the individuals who took and distributed pictures--personal liability without that qualified immunity BS.
As for the civil case: "mental anguish" my ass. Grow a thicker skin, people.
I remember an article many years ago that pointed out that when settlements come out of department budgets instead of general municipal funds, the incidents go way down.
30 million of the sheriff's was Kobe's widow settling over helicopter crash photos. That one didn't really sit right with me.
That still leaves $120M in civil settlements stemming from abusive behavior by LA County sheriffs deputies.
I've known for years that the city of Chicago budgets $50M/yr to cover lawsuits against cops, and I've thought it weird that the city just keeps doing that without ever noting which cops cause the most problems and firing them.
And now we learn that LA has a far worse problem than Chicago in that respect. It boggles the mind.
Without disagreeing that there are bad actions and bad actors at times in police departments, they try to do their jobs at the nexus between things going well and things going wrong. That nexus is where we are should we face a mugger or a thief or worse. Decisions that are made, often instantaneously, of necessity, in those situations are going to go wrong some times. I have worked around police officers and have seen them show more tolerance than I felt for some of the actors and bystanders in those situations. Litigation losses, to a certain extent, should be expected for people facing those situations regularly. It ain't an easy job.
Denver's seen a similar rise in pay-outs for bad behavior- not just "mistakes" - and they have all been tied to what cops did during the George Floyd protests. These were not "mistakes" but verified mistreatment of Americans. You stan for that?
I agree that law enforcement is an inherently difficult job. But it is also really easy to spot certain officers who are just really bad at it. Civil litigation helps us with this. So why is it so hard to fire them?