A visual representation of approximately $1 billion, stacked in $100 bills

Bad policing has cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. WSJ reporters Zusha Elinson and Dan Frosch conducted an in-depth study of public records and found the cost of settling police misconduct cases has almost doubled over a five-year period.

“The 10 cities with the largest police departments paid out $248.7 million last year in settlements and court judgments in police-misconduct cases, up 48 percent from $168.3 million in 2010, according to data gathered by The Wall Street Journal through public-records requests,” reported the WSJ. “Those cities collectively paid out $1.02 billion over those five years in such cases, which include alleged beatings, shootings and wrongful imprisonment.”

Ultimately, taxpayers end up footing the bill for these settlements. Cities either pay the legal costs by self insuring, with the money coming from city funds, or the cases are handled by insurance companies. But just like car insurance, the more claims filed, the higher the premium. However, officers rarely end up paying out of their pockets for bad behavior. Notorious Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has managed to fend off several decades of lawsuits, because the county picks up the tab. The Arizona Republic reported lawsuits against the Maricopa sheriff’s department have cost the county $44 million. And that’s one of the reasons why Arpaio stays in office. The minute he retires, he becomes responsible for the legal costs, according to a Salon article.

Of all the the cities tracked by the WSJ, New York had the costliest police department, racking up $601.3 million in legal costs over five years. Payments for settlements and judgments jumped from $93.8 in fiscal year 2013 to $165 million in 2014, reported the WSJ. The city recently paid the family of Eric Garner, who was choked to death during an altercation with Staten Island police, a $5.9 million settlement.

Sometimes incidents of police abuse are so blatant municipalities want to settle the cases quickly to stop bad publicity. The County of San Bernardino took two weeks to pay Francis Pusok $650,000 after a news helicopter captured sheriff’s deputies kicking and punching him. Pusok didn’t even have time to file a lawsuit before he received a cash settlement.

While some legal experts say the prevalence of camera phones is capturing more cases of police misconduct, that’s not always the case. Municipalities are still paying for decades-old cases of police abuse.

“New York City agreed last year to pay $41 million to five Black and Hispanic men imprisoned for the 1989 beating and rape of a jogger in Central Park, then freed after another man confessed and DNA evidence confirmed his story,” reported the WSJ. “In 2013 and 2014, for example, Chicago paid more than $60 million in cases where people were wrongfully imprisoned decades ago because of alleged police misconduct.”

However, the problem of expensive police misconduct cases is not just confined to big cities. Albuquerque, N.M. also has a police department with a troubling record of human rights abuses.

“The city of about 550,000 has had a high number of fatal police shootings and has spent more than $25 million on civil-rights and police-misconduct settlements over the past five years, with annual payouts nearly quadrupling over that period,” reported the WSJ. “Earlier this month, Albuquerque officials reached a $5 million settlement with the family of James Boyd, a mentally unstable homeless man who was shot by police in 2014 in an incident captured on video.”

Unfortunately, there seems to be a disconnect between the public and the police. Taxpayers don’t seem to realize they are footing the bill for bad policing.

“Civil suits can win financial settlements. But maybe it’s time for taxpayers to start insisting their elected officials invest in better-trained police officers who avoid costly lawsuits,” suggested an Atlanta Black Star article.

Written by Manny Otika and featured on Atlanta Black Star

Infamous Maricopa County Sheriff is requesting a new judge to handle his trial, and is also seeking help from the public for his legal fees.

Arpaio is currently on trial and awaiting judgment from US District Judge Murray Snow on whether he failed to adhere to a 2011 court order that required him to refrain from bias in treatment and investigation of minorities.

In a letter to his supporters, Arpaio says he doesn’t have enough money to pay for his attorneys, and claims he is the victim of unfair targeting by immigration rights groups who are suing him for alleged racist policies that target the Latino community.

“In some instances I have to personally pay for attorneys to represent me in these cases. I do not have the personal wealth or the wherewithal to keep up with the costly demands of paying for attorneys to defend me.”

— Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Arpaio has filed a motion for Judge Snow to be replaced because he believes the judge is personally connected to the case. Arpaio claims his former attorney authorized a secret investigation of Snow’s wife.

“No reasonable person with knowledge of the facts can deny that Judge Snow is now investigating and presiding over issues involving his own family,” wrote Arpaio’s attorneys in their filing.

In 2013 Snow ruled that the sheriff’s office was engaging in racial profiling targeting Latinos during immigration patrols and traffic stops.

Arpaio has successfully had a judge removed from a case in the past. In 2009, Arpaio’s attorneys had US District Judge Mary Marguia removed from the profiling case, alleging she was also too close. Marguia’s sister is the leader of a Latino rights organization.

He is currently scheduled to appear in court this June, but the date may be affected by his filing.

It seemed fitting somehow that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s unmasking this week came on the anniversary of Senate Bill 1070.

On the day that marks a largely irrelevant law that was mostly struck down as unconstitutional, Arpaio took his own giant step toward irrelevance on Thursday.

America’s scariest sheriff admitted that he’d hired an investigator to investigate the Department of Justice, which at the time was investigating him and his top deputies for abuse of power. And he admitted that his attorney hired an investigator to investigate the wife of the federal judge who nailed the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office for engaging in widespread racial profiling of Latino drivers.

The judge who is now considering whether to refer Arpaio to prosecutors for criminal contempt charges.

Generally speaking, it’s not nice to try to intimidate federal authorities. But then again, intimidation has been the name of Arpaio’s sleazy game for years.

Just ask Dan Saban, who ran against Arpaio in 2004 and found himself the subject of a rape investigation. Arpaio opened a criminal investigation in a 30-year-old allegation that Saban, then 17, had raped his adoptive mother. Saban claimed he was the victim. Regardless, the statute of limitations had run out but not the statute of intimidation. Saban lost the election. He sued for defamation and lost but it cost us well over $800,000 to defend Arpaio.

Just ask former Maricopa County Schools Superintendent Sandra Dowling, whose home was invaded in 2006 by the sheriff’s SWAT team, in search of evidence that she’d been stealing, basically, from homeless children. She was later convicted of a misdemeanor, for giving her daughter a summer job. That one cost us $250,000.

Just ask Phoenix New Times founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, arrested in 2007 in the dead of night after writing a piece critical of Arpaio’s sidekick, then-Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. That one cost us $3.75 million.

Just ask former Maricopa County Supervisors Mary Rose Wilcox, former Supervisor Don Stapley, former Superior Court Judges Gary Donahoe, Ken Fields, Barbara Mundell and Anna Baca, and a collection of county employees. Arpaio and Thomas in 2008 and 2009 launched a series of corruption investigations, indicting Wilcox, Stapley and Donahoe and accusing the others of racketeering. All charges/accusations were dismissed in 2010. Cost to taxpayers; $7.5 million.

On Thursday, Apaio admitted that his attorney hired a private detective to investigate the wife of U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow, who held this week’s civil contempt hearing. This, after a tipster said she’d told him that her husband “wanted to do everything to make sure I’m not elected.”

Arpaio also admitted hiring an unreliable informant to investigate some vague tip that the Department of Justice was spying on his e-mails and the e-mails of judges. This, as the FBI was conducting an abuse-of-power investigation into Team Arpaio’s tactics.

As alarming as it is to have a sheriff who runs around using his power to get back at his enemies, it’s also alarming to have one who apparently doesn’t have a clue what’s going on in the office he runs.

Or so he suggested during Thursday’s testimony.

Arpaio testified that he didn’t really understand Snow’s injunction – the one ordering him to stop his immigration patrols in 2011.

“I’ve been a top federal official for 22 years. I have a deep respect for the courts, federal courts and federal judges,” he told the judge. “I didn’t know all the facts of this court order, and it really hurts me that after 55 years… to be in this position. So I want to apologize to the judge that I should have known more. This court order slipped through the cracks.”

The court order slipped through the cracks? For 18 months?

Arpaio is either lying or he’s admitting that at at 82, he’s no longer able to do the job.

Either way, he should resign.

Arpaio’s day is done. His America’s-toughest-sheriff, I’m-the-only-one-enforcing-immigration-laws schtick long ago went sour and the people of Arizona – the ones outside the Joe Choir – now have seen at exactly who and what Arpaio is.

A bully with a badge.