Giovonn Joseph-McDade, Tommy Le and Brent Heath likely never met each other in life.<\/p>\n
But in death, they represent a growing trend among those who died at the hands of police under questionable circumstances in Washington state. <\/p>\n
Lawsuits filed over their violent deaths resulted in more than a dozen multimillion-dollar settlements in 2021 as cities and counties increasingly decide to forgo civil trials and offer grieving families a kind of financial accountability. While settling police misconduct cases before they reach a courtroom is hardly a new tactic for risk managers, the steadily rising numbers and amounts are.<\/p>\n
Last year saw Washington cities and counties settle 15 misconduct and wrongful death cases for a total of at least $34.3 million, a 146% increase over what was paid out in 2020 \u2014 and a 363.5% increase over the 2019 amount, according to data compiled by The Seattle Times through public disclosure, court dockets and news accounts. <\/p>\n
In fact, Washington cities and counties have paid more than $100 million over the past five years to resolve lawsuits and claims arising from allegations of police misconduct.<\/p>\n
The data shows that the number and size of settlements have grown precipitously over that time period \u2014 from $1.15 million in 2017 to the more than $34 million in 2021, a 2,990% increase. Nearly two-thirds of the total $100 million has been paid since the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis officers renewed outrage over unchecked police brutality and bolstered the Black Lives Matter movement. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo amount of money will replace a life,\u201d said Sonia Joseph, the mother of 20-year-old Giovonn Joseph-McDade, who last year settled a lawsuit over her son\u2019s 2017 shooting death with the city of Kent for $4.4 million. \u201cIt was insulting, but for my family it was never about the money. It was about raising awareness. And I wanted to raise the bar for the families who come after us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe climate is changing,\u201d said Joseph, who now sits on the state\u2019s Criminal Justice Training Commission<\/a>. \u201cI think people in the community are aware of what is happening \u2026 There\u2019s no longer that veil that police are perfect.\u201d <\/p>\n The trend shows no indication of slacking off. Legal settlements in police abuse claims and lawsuits reached in the first three months of 2022 total nearly $19 million, just about half the amount paid in all of last year, the data shows.<\/p>\n The settlements reviewed by The Times involve 56 high-profile police incidents from across the state, including allegations of excessive force \u2014 such as fatal and nonfatal shootings \u2014 wrongful arrests and officer negligence.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo distinct reasons\u201d are driving the trend, said professor John Rappaport, who teaches criminal law at the University of Chicago and has conducted research into how insurance carriers can influence police behavior.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first is the now-unpredictable nature of what a jury might do if a case goes to trial,\u201d he said. Growing public concerns over police violence means \u201cthere is a greater uncertainty when it comes to verdicts. Not only might you lose, but you need to worry about how much it will cost you if you do.\u201d <\/p>\n The other related reason, Rappaport said, is the advent of video, either from police body- and dash-cameras, or from bystanders armed with the now-ubiquitous smartphones recording police interactions. Some of the footage \u2014 like the agonizing video of Floyd\u2019s murder, or the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice<\/a> \u2014 have shocked the public conscience and shaken confidence in law enforcement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe decisions to settle these lawsuits, or take them to trial, is based on uncertainty\u201d of the outcome, Rappaport said. \u201cBody-camera and cellphone video is helping to raise that uncertainty and the effect has been to drive up the settlement rate.\u201d <\/p>\n Risk managers, the Washington Cities Insurance Authority and officials with the city of Seattle and King County declined to weigh in on Rappaport\u2019s theories. None was willing to be interviewed for this story. <\/p>\n What the data demonstrates is evident in Washington \u2014 more settlements for more money \u2014 is being seen elsewhere around the country as well, Rappaport said.<\/p>\n Another factor is at work in pushing settlements in some cases: criminal prosecutions of some officers. While still a rarity, publicity surrounding those incidents plays into the increasing public skepticism of law enforcement, officials say.<\/p>\n Video played a key role in the recent decisions by prosecutors to charge police officers in the death of Manny Ellis in Tacoma<\/a> and Jesse Sarey in Auburn<\/a>. The Ellis family received a $4 million settlement in March from the Pierce County Sheriff\u2019s Department, whose deputies were on the scene when Ellis died, with claims against the involved Tacoma officers still pending.<\/p>\n Sarey\u2019s family settled with the city of Auburn for $4 million last year, according to information provided by the Washington Cities Insurance Authority, an insurance pool that provides coverage to roughly 90 small and midsized police agencies statewide.<\/p>\n Auburn in 2020 paid $1.25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the<\/a> family of Isaiah Obet, another man killed by the same police officer who shot Sarey. That payment came shortly after that officer, Jeff Nelson, was charged with murder and assault for Sarey\u2019s death. <\/p>\n Those criminal charges were the first filed against any police officer in Washington since 2009, when an Everett police officer was charged for a fatal shooting outside a bar. That officer, Troy Meade, was acquitted<\/a>. Before that, it had been nearly 40 years since an officer was charged in a homicide. <\/p>\n Nelson\u2019s charges were followed by criminal charges against three Tacoma officers in Ellis\u2019 death.<\/p>\n Those recent criminal charges were made possible by changes in the law governing the police use of deadly force that came with the passage of I-940 in 2019, a citizen initiative championed by families who lost loved ones to police violence. The initiative passed with strong support<\/a> underscoring widespread concerns about the use of force by officers. Before I-940 passed, Washington\u2019s uniquely restrictive statute \u2014 which required a finding of \u201cmalice\u201d \u2014 made it virtually impossible to charge an officer with murder. <\/a><\/p>\n The passage of I-940 followed another red-flag incident in 2017 that rattled risk managers and police agencies in Washington: an unprecedented and unexpected multimillion-dollar federal jury verdict in a civil rights lawsuit filed by the family of a young father killed by police in Pierce County. The jury awarded the family of Leonard Thomas $15.1 million<\/a> after a Lakewood-led SWAT team surrounded his house and shot the unarmed Thomas as he held his 4-year-son in his arms.<\/p>\n The verdict included $6.5 million in punitive damages against three Lakewood officers, including Mike Zaro, who is currently the city\u2019s police chief, finding they acted maliciously, recklessly and with callous disregard in storming Thomas\u2019 house, shooting the family dog, and giving a police sniper the green light to shoot the30-year-old Black man.<\/span>Lakewood officers insisted Thomas was holding his son hostage, but the unanimous jury didn\u2019t buy it. <\/p>\n Even without video, the jury found against the city on every cause of action after hearing testimony that one of the SWAT officers, Mike Wiley, exclaimed that the sniper round that tore through Thomas\u2019 abdomen was a \u201cmillion-dollar frickin\u2019 shot.\u201d <\/p>\n Lakewood negotiated a $13.1 million settlement<\/a> with the family in 2018, after the trial judge rejected their argument that the jury had been influenced by race. <\/a><\/p>\n Annalesa Thomas, Leonard\u2019s mother, said at the time she didn\u2019t realize the significance of the verdict, which remains unprecedented in Western Washington in a police civil rights and wrongful death case.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were so naive,\u201d said Thomas, who also sits on the Criminal Justice Training Commission. Her husband, Fred \u2014 who the jury found was wrongfully arrested that night trying to save his son \u2014 was appointed by Gov. Jay Inslee to the advisory board<\/a> overseeing formation of a new Office of Independent Investigations for police shootings.<\/p>\n \u201cThat lawsuit was the only way for us to see any justice,\u201d she said. The Pierce County Prosecutor\u2019s Office had found the shooting was justified and declined to file criminal charges against any of the officers involved.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing is, you have to live with the stigma that people actually think you did it for the money,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The verdict was particularly stunning since Lakewood and its attorneys followed what has historically been the defense pattern in handling police-abuse lawsuits. <\/p>\n Up until then, cities and counties routinely rolled the dice and took the cases to trial, where plaintiffs \u2014 whose dead loved ones often had troubled backgrounds or criminal histories \u2014 faced the daunting task of challenging the word of a sworn officer of the law. By putting the uniformed officer on the witness stand to recite a well-rehearsed version of events, police were all but assured of a favorable verdict.<\/p>\n When there were settlements in these earlier cases, they were largely for smaller amounts, often considered \u201cnuisance payments\u201d doled out simply to make the litigation go away.<\/p>\n No longer. The shock of the Thomas verdict and incidents such as the deaths of Ellis and Sarey locally and, nationally, cases such as the 2020 murder of Floyd and others, has risk managers reevaluating their strategies.<\/p>\nUncertain verdicts<\/h3>\n
More settlements, more money<\/h3>\n
Unexpected, unprecedented verdict<\/h3>\n