When video cameras seem to be everywhere, police officers are finding themselves under greater scrutiny while in the performance of their duties.
Here are some of the largest lawsuit payouts that have cost taxpayers in the state of Alaska when officers have been found guilty of police misconduct.
In May 2015, the city of Bethel, Alaska, paid a $175,000 settlement in a police brutality case that occurred in 2014 and was caught on a store’s security camera, the Alaska Dispatch News reported.
“Obviously the city paid a significant amount of money because they did not approve of what happened,” Bill Ingaldson, an Anchorage lawyer who represented the city of Bethel told the ADN. “They are trying to make things right.”
In May 2013, the city of Anchorage paid $60,000 to settle a police harassment lawsuit filed by Anchorage resident Matt Newman, 35, who said he was injured in a 2010 assault by police, the Anchorage Press reported. He was charged with two misdemeanors in the case that the paper reported “ended with at least one officer pointing a gun at him and two officers taking him down and handcuffing him on a concrete stairway.”
In the wake of his settlement, the city agreed to offer training in “de-escalation and verbal communication” for patrol officers, the paper said.
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