opinion

Beating shows cost of police brutality: Editorial

About $178.67 for every household.

That’s what Inkster, Michigan, residents will pay to settle a lawsuit brought by Floyd Dent, the 57-year-old Detroit man viciously beaten last January by an Inkster cop. And it’s the tangible price of systemic injustice.

You’d think knowing our criminal justice system is biased, a realization surely made inescapable by a streak of high-profile police shootings, would be enough. That awareness that our system produces different outcomes for white and non-white Americans accused of the same crimes, that there’s a broad demarcation between the lived experiences of white and non-white Americans, between outcomes and opportunities across the board, would be a sufficient call to action, enough to invoke the quintessentially American notion that all people are created equal.

It’s not. So, try this: Racism is too expensive.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation recently issued a Michigan-centric version of its 2010 report, “The Business Case for Racial Equality,” which documents the economic costs of systemic injustice, cultural bias, and the wealth and opportunity gaps that result. Social safety net programs to mitigate the impacts of financial and economic exclusion cost money, but investment in early childhood education and other programs that provide a route out of poverty pay tremendous dividends and could save the state some $4.5 billion. If non-white workers earned wages equivalent to their white counterparts, it would mean a $32 billion leap in the state’s GDP.

And then there’s Floyd Dent.

A police dashcam captured Dent being hoisted from his vehicle, put on the ground and restrained by former Inkster cop William Melendez and another officer as Melendez punched Dent in the head, again and again and again. Other officers arrived, and Dent was cuffed and led toward the camera, his bloodied face clearly visible in a final gut-wrenching shot.

Melendez lost his jobs in Inkster and Highland Park, and he’s facing criminal charges in the beating. All charges against Dent, whom Inkster police initially accused of possessing cocaine, were dropped.

And so the civil settlement, $1.38 million Inkster can’t afford to pay, which is why taxes have to go up: $178.67 for a house valued at $55,400, the median value of a home in this town of 24,857 individuals, 38 percent of whom live in poverty.

It is nauseating that we’ve come to this, but if this is an argument that works, we’ll make it: We can’t afford to pay the cost of systemic racism in our criminal justice system. And that’s another problem — we can’t even begin to quantify the statewide cost of bias in the criminal justice system.

An investigation by WXYZ-TV found the Detroit Police Department has paid $27 million to settle lawsuits against officers since 2008, money that cash-strapped city likewise can’t afford. Why focus on Detroit? It’s a large city with a greater density of complaints, settlements and payouts, but it would be a mistake to assume such things don’t happen in other communities.

—Detroit Free Press