The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has a couple of articles concerning Allen County and City of Fort Wayne legal fees. The lesson seems to be that, if you have a police force, you’re going to get sued. Over recent years, Allen County seems to be averaging about $200,000 per year in legal fees and about $43,000 per year in settlements. That strikes me as a pretty good ratio. The City of Fort Wayne has been spending something like $2 million per year on combined legal fees and settlements. The article cites an expert of some sort who says that Fort Wayne has a pretty good settlement history.
The lion’s share of these expenses stems from police cases. That is unsurprising. Even if you have well run police departments — and I have no particular knowledge of Allen County or Fort Wayne, one way or another — the police have to deal with inmates who are unhappy to be where they are and who have lots of time on their hands. They also get called to situations where force has to be used. Even when force is being used properly, it’s not too tough for the person on the receiving end to make allegations that can cost a municipality a lot of money to defend. The presence of “deep pockets” also skews things a bit. If you have a situation where Person A created the bad situation, where the police respond to the bad situation, and where Person B gets hurt as a result of the situation; Person B is more inclined to blame the police –at least in legal proceedings — if, as is often the case, Person A has no money. And, of course, there is always the possibility that the police will screw up in one way or another.
This is an area where municipalities don’t have a great deal of control over expenses. And, while that can help a lawyer such as myself make a living, it’s horribly annoying for taxpayers.
I can’t speak to Allen County, but here in Marion County, the Sheriff does have a lot of control over legal expenses. Here we have a privatized jail and privatized medical at all the other jails. Repeatedly the Sheriff has been put on notice regarding problems at the jails that has led to numerous lawsuits, including himself getting sued, and he won’t do anything. Sheriff Frank Anderson has never investigated any death or injury at a facilitiy not has he ever audited the private jail.
Contrast that to the immediate action taken by the Hancock County Sheriff to inveistgation when an inmate died there, action which concluded with private medical contractors and a jailer getting fired or suspended.
Of course you’re talking about a different thing…arrest type situations. Here the Sheriff no longer has arrest powers. Doesn’t stop him though from plundering the commissary fund to buy cars and motorcycles with lights and sirens.
Seems like major metropolitan jails are creatures unto themselves. I always hear bad things about Indianapolis and Chicago.
Those figures do not seem out of line to me. $200,000 in legal fees for a police department, even in a small city is basically what, a lawyer, admin, and office expenses?
By the time you figure benefit expense, subscriptions to Westlaw, Lexis, etc… there doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable amount to spend on the actual attorney(s).
Crime statistics are so unreliable, these two metrics could actually serve as a decent yardstick to relatively measure the degree to which a department violates others’ rights if weighted by population.
In particular, the trends of these numbers could offer a bit of insight as to the direction a community is headed. Most banks for example, collect data on the number of complaints by channel (written, oral, web), department, amount, and topic (fair lending, overdraft fees, etc…). This is a primary metric in performance reviews at my bank.
Putting more intelligence around how we monitor our government strikes me as more productive than just voting for the other party when one gets on our nerves. It would prevent a lot of the behavior in the first place.