Lets Stop Rewarding Cops For Murdering People.

One of the agonizing things about writing Financial Pro-Tips is when I have several ways of framing an idea, and then I need to pick one. I find this is more often then not the case when talking about how the police are corrupt. There are so many different ways in which the police as an institution are awful, racist, murderous, and leeches to the public coffers, so even thoughts its the most popular post ever on FPT (yes, really) I think this just scratches the surface. 

 Luckily, I have a blog where I can dig deeper.

 

A lot of time has been spent this year talking about why police shootings happen. From the deeply racist roots of America's police system, the fact that murderous cops are allowed to move from department to department without any accountability, to all the issues with getting grand juries to bring charges. The list goes on and on. There is however one aspect that I haven't seen people talk about, and that is how an officer financially benefits from murdering someone.

When a shooting takes place, the department will begin its investigation, and while that takes place, the officer involved will be put on administrative leave. Now, since the police are typically investigating themselves, these investigations rarely result in any charges against the officer involved, who has just spent the past few days, or weeks, and sometimes months, collecting pay while on administrative leave.  

So when officers shoot someone, they know that they will be reassigned out of harm's way and that they are likely to not face any sort of repercussions from the department. Recently, though, more and more police shootings have resulted in protests against the police, wouldn't the risk of protest discourage the police from doing this?

Nope, in fact, protests are great for the department's wallet. This isn't just my own opinion of what the officers may be thinking, they'll say it themselves. In 2015 an officer bragged about spending what he called his "Michael Brown Bonus" Referring to the overtime that officers received for working protests against the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Cities have had to pay out millions to the police in overtime pay over the course of this year alone as police officers continue to murder people in the streets, earning the officer administrative leave, and providing the other officers more overtime. 

So why would the shootings stop? In fact, the shootings haven't even slowed down, and the number of police shootings remains eerily consistent year by year. I think this is why it is so important to talk about defunding the police because our tax dollars are being used to incentivize violence against communities of color. More should be done however to remove the systemic incentives for police to move to lethal force. Ending paid administrative leave after a shooting could be one part of that, as it would create an economic incentive to focus on de-escalation first. 

I think that adding this to the conversation is important because while we should address the deeply racist systems within policing, we can also dismantle the tangible systems which reward this behavior. This is also a step in the direction of the goal of defunding, demilitarizing, and eventually, abolishing the police.