Yet this is not even the first moment the city has done such a thing. In March, Jackson apologized for language that Cleveland had used in a brief that blamed Rice for causing his own death by “failure ... to exercise due care to avoid injury.” Jackson called the language insensitive, but said it had been used to preserve the city’s legal defenses. That seems to cut straight to the heart of the matter: While Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty failed to indict Loehmann in the case, it seems telling the wording in the brief is so inflammatory to a lay public the mayor felt compelled to apologize.

Despite the criminal case against Loehmann ending without indictment, Rice’s family has filed a civil lawsuit. The city paid out more than $10 million to victims of police brutality between 2004 and 2014.

It’s hard to know just how common it is for a city to bill the family of a victim of police violence. In one similar case in 2012, the city of New York billed Laverne Dobbinson $710 for a dent in a police car. The car struck and killed her son Tamon Robinson; an officer was chasing him after spotting him trying to steal pavers. After public backlash, a law firm collecting the debt dropped its effort. A New York Police Department spokesman told The New York Times, “We don’t know any instance where we send letters like that. I’m not sure how it came out.”

Just this week, a Chicago officer filed a suit requesting $10 million in damages from the estate of Quintonio LeGrier, a college student he shot and killed on December 26.

But asking Rice’s family to pay for expenses after police shot him is reminiscent of little so much as “bullet fees,” charges reportedly issued by repressive governments after executions. In 2009, for instance, The Wall Street Journal reported the family of a young man shot during protests in Tehran was being asked to pay $3,000 to retrieve his body, as compensation for the bullet used by Iranian security forces to kill him. It’s also been widely reported the Chinese government charged a bullet fee to the families of people it executed. Those regimes are hardly seem like the model the Forest City wants to follow—even if its police has a similar track record of excessive violence.

Related Videos