The Sun-Times editorial “Keep taxpayers from paying the price for bad behavior by city workers,” mentioned that City of Chicago taxpayers spent almost $528 billion during 2010-2020 for settlements related to police misconduct. That’s an average of almost $53 million per year. The editorial ended by saying they hope court-ordered police reforms under the federal consent decree will curb police misconduct.
I had a thought. What if we proposed to the police union that they defend and settle these cases with union retirement funds and we, the taxpayers will fund that new responsibility with an annual retirement fund contribution of $25 to $30 million (adjusted annually). That is, if they paid out zero, they would still receive an annual agreed-upon amount from the city. That would achieve the following:
