Since June, more than 500 MuckRock readers have nominated their local police agencies for public records requests seeking data on the restitution paid to settle misconduct lawsuits. Each year, millions of dollars are spent by law enforcement agencies to compensate citizens for out-of-line officers, and agencies have started responding to the MuckRock requests with summaries of legal settlements.

Yesterday, Gainesville, Florida became the latest agency to provide a response, a straightforward spreadsheet detailing claims and their cost to the department. The last ten years of allegations against the department included the use of a police dog against a 10-year-old biking in his apartment complex…

…multiple cases of voyeurism by an officer…

…and other settled cases of excessive force.

The data begins to provide some insight into how police misconduct has been handled so far in a particular agency and in what cases misconduct is substantiated or compensated when challenged. The Gainesville records couldn’t omit the multiple claims brought against them for officers who, while on-duty, had engaged with sex workers they’d been “investigating”.

MuckRock will be continuing to request, collect, and collate these materials.

Help us create a more complete dataset. If you’d like to see your police department added to our collection, submit its name below, and we’ll handle the public records request to get the data.

“Late Night Lurking” by gilmorec is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0