It’s Cheeper to Reform Police

The city of Louisville Kentucky reached a $12 Million settlement with the family of Breonna Taylor for her wrongful death by Police. Along with the monetary settlement the city agreed to a number of changes to police reform programs to help prevent tragedies like the killing of this innocent woman sleeping in her house.

Reforming policing programs is not only good for all communities, but it has to be a lot cheeper to reform than to pay families for the wrongful deaths of their loved ones. Twelve million dollars is the most amount of money ever paid by the city of a Louisville for a wrongful death.

There is no amount of money that can make up the loss of a child to a mother, but money is how our society makes amends. Think about where twelve million could have gone to in that city to improve life for her citizens and a young women could still be alive. It is right to encourage community policing, more social workers on the front lines and better oversight of police problems before they get into the kind of trouble that costs lives and millions.

A number of years ago I did a story for Durham Magazine about a program a former police chief started where police worked with kids in the community so help them not get off on a wrong foot. It seemed like a positive way for police to get to know kids and kids to get to be friends with police. Sadly when that chief retired so did his program. Perhaps something like that could be brought back. We need to have more Andy Taylor’s so we have fewer Breonna Taylor’s.