S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman. On today's show , we are talking about the case of Kanoa Wilson , a teen killed by an SPD officer earlier this year. Well , now the city is preparing to pay the largest public police misconduct settlement in history. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. In January of this year , 16 year old Kanoa Wilson was shot by police in downtown San Diego. He was pronounced dead at a hospital within the hour. Today , the San Diego City Council has agreed to pay $30 million to Canoas. Family. Nicholas Rowley , the attorney for the family , describes Kanoa as an innocent kid fleeing another gunman.
S2: And as he turns the corner , the police officer sees him and without even having the time to perceive and react and and say police , he just shoots him.
S1: Well , the settlement is believed to be the highest public amount paid to a family after a police killing. Higher than the $27 million paid to the family of George Floyd. Joining me with the details is Andrew Bowen , KPBS Metro reporter. Andrew , welcome.
S3: Hi , Jade. Thanks.
S1: I know that you just witnessed the city council meeting , but tell me , you know , Kanoa was only 16 when he was killed in January.
S3: He said he was a passionate surfer , and he was often at the beach surfing with his father. And he said he dreamed of a career one day that would keep him connected to the water , because he loved spending time in the ocean so much. And he was , what , 16 , but just a few days shy of his 17th birthday.
S1: Take me back to that night in January , surveillance and body worn camera footage showed Kanoa running away from someone who fired at him in downtown at a train station. What happened next ? Yeah.
S3: So from the surveillance footage , we see Kanoa standing on the trolley platform at Santa Fe Depot. There's a man standing a bit further down , and we see that man raise his arm and you see a flash , which is explained as the flash from the gunshot. Uh , Kanoa starts running away. Uh , he runs through the breezeway of Santa Fe Depot and comes out onto Kettner Boulevard. And then Officer Daniel Gold. The second is on Kettner. He's walking north and he sees Kanoa running out. And as Kanoa starts to run across the street , officer gold fires at Kanoa. The bullet hits him in the back. And then after he fires , he shouts San Diego Police ! You then briefly see Kanoa falling to the ground. He's writhing in pain. You can hear him screaming. And as you said , he was pronounced dead in the hospital just 35 minutes later.
S1: He was running to get to safety.
S3: We don't know how long it will take , but for some context , listeners may recall that California passed a law in 2019 that changed the standards for when police officers are allowed to use deadly force. Previous to this law , the standard was whether that deadly force was reasonable. And after the law , that standard was changed to necessary so officers can use force only when necessary to defend against imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer themself or to another person. So that's the standard by which the district Attorney's office will be judging this case. Okay.
S1: Okay. And this happened back in January.
S3: According to Transparent California , which is an organization that tracks public employee salaries , he earned more than $104,000 last year. A lot of that was overtime pay. Um , and an STD spokesman told the New York Times that Officer Gold is on administrative duty , and that the department will not make a decision on Officer Gold's future until the Da investigation is concluded. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S3: So , um , you know , it was an ask and that ask was granted. Attorneys also threatened to demand at least $100 million if the case went to trial. So they believed that , uh , if this case had gone to trial and went before a jury , that the jury could have awarded much more than these $30 million. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. And earlier this morning , the City Council officially approved the $30 million settlement.
S3: Uh , two council members also made some brief remarks. Council member Shawn Ella Rivera described the , uh , Canoas death as the thing of nightmares for anyone who has a child , and he acknowledged that no amount of money can replace a lost child. He also said the attorney for Wilson's parents had said that he had never seen a city take responsibility so quickly. Council member Henry Foster , the third , also spoke and we should mention Kanoa was black and foster is the only black person on the city council. Uh , here is a bit of what Councilmember Foster had to say.
S4: As a father of a young black man , this hurts. This could be my son. If only you could begin to understand the fear I often have when my son leaves the house. I must say , it is a real fear , and I truly believe it's warranted. I said this before , and I'll say this again. This is the black experience in America as a city. We have to do better.
S3: NJ Council members Foster and Rivera both said that they want to know what the city is doing to ensure that this does not happen again.
S1: I sure , I'm sure that a lot of people are looking for accountability there. You know , the city council is facing major budget challenges. Now , the city Council will pay this $30 million settlement.
S3: And there was a recent financial report that projected this fiscal year that the public liability fund would have a balance of $28.2 million. So this fund doesn't even have enough cash in it to pay the settlements all at once. Now , settlements are often not paid out all at once. They're paid in installments. So this could be spread over several years. But it's important to note that the public liability fund is actually already in a deficit. So the city has a target for the balance of that fund. It's based on the the payouts that are made in the most , the three most recent fiscal years. And so this fund is already below the city's target due to increasing payouts. Um , often , you know , not just police killings or any police misconduct , but also trip and fall accidents on sidewalks or things like that. Um , taxpayers will have to backfill and replenish this fund after the settlement is fully paid out. And , uh , as you may have , you know , as listeners who who have been paying attention to the city , know the city is struggling with a budget deficit. The current fiscal year is seeing , uh , lower than expected revenues. And , uh , the mayor is asking department heads to halt all discretionary spending. There may be a mid-year budget cuts that have to take place. Uh , so , you know , from a budgetary perspective , um , this settlement is is absolutely going to hurt the city's bottom line.
S1: And , Andrew , I'm not sure if you can recall , but , um , was more money allocated to SPD in the last budget.
S3: Typically we see year to year increases to the police department budget. You know , there are collective bargaining agreements that promise raises to the officers. Uh , so you know , it it isn't always the case that the city is hiring more officers , but simply employing the the officers that are already on the payroll costs more each year.
S1: All right , Andrew , I know you are very busy covering this. We're going to let you go. Thank you so much though.
S3: Thank you Jake.
S1: Now I want to bring in two experts to talk about the significance of this settlement from a police accountability standpoint. Joining me now is Sean Fields. He's a professor of law at Cal Western Law School who studies police legitimacy and reform. Professor , welcome.
S5: Thank you so much for having me.
S1: Glad to have you here. Also , Christie Lopez , a professor at Georgetown Law , where she co-directs their innovative policing program. Professor , welcome to you.
S6: Thank you for having me.
S1: Glad to have you here. So this is believed to be the highest public amount paid to a family in a police killing settlement , to your knowledge.
S5: And there's no central database that monitors police officer involved , killings in general. But it certainly is fair to say it's among the highest such type settlements in its history. As you mentioned in The Open , the family of George Floyd settled their civil rights lawsuit against the Minneapolis Police Department in 2021 for $27 million , and at the time , that was seen as widely seen as the highest such type settlement of its kind. And this , of course , is more than that. There's two small caveats that I would make. The Floyd settlement in 2021 , adjusted for inflation today , would be just north of $31 million. And of course , police officer settlements of this kind are different from jury verdicts. I wanted to note that last year , a Texas jury awarded more than $98 million to the family of the surviving members of Botham Jean , who was murdered by a Texas police officer , and that award included $60 million in punitive damages. Now , whether that entire amount ends up being revised downward later on remains to be seen , but it's that type of risk of a of a much larger jury verdict that I think is driving these higher police settlements that we've seen in this case. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S7: You know , how sympathetic is this plaintiff ? How egregious was the shooting , the killing. Um , what is this officer's history ? Uh , what has the department done or the city done to try to prevent , uh , incidents like this in the past ? Um , but also , they will importantly take into account , um , whether the officer is judgment proof. Um , and they also may take it into account. How much money is it going to take to really send a message to the jurisdiction that it needs to change its practices moving forward ? The law makes it very difficult for people to directly require or sue to require a police department to change the way it trains officers or hires officers or uses force. And so sometimes families who want to make a difference going forward , the only way they have of doing that is by trying to send a message to a very large , um , damages award. Unfortunately , um , as Professor Fields notes , there is the bottom gene verdict did involve punitive damages , but under the law , uh , a municipality is not is not required. Cannot. You cannot seek punitive damages from a municipality. So those punitive damages are going to have to come from the individual officer. Most officers are not going to be able to come up with $98 million. Usually or often the the jurisdiction will , um , indemnify or pay that money for the officer , but not always. And as a , um , as a plaintiff , as an individual , you don't know whether that's going to be available to you. So a settlement can be a way of ensuring that you get compensation , that you send that message that things need to change going forward without having to take that risk , that you won't be able to collect the damages that a jury awards you. Interesting.
S1: Interesting. Professor fields , you mentioned earlier , the family of George Floyd received $27 million. At the time , it was reportedly considered the largest pretrial settlement in wrongful death and a wrongful death case , I should say.
S5: And as I said before , it's hard to say with any sort of empirical certainty. But for those of us who study police accountability , the prevailing sense is that , at least for higher profile cases like this one , settlement values have increased substantially. A decade ago , it was common that a high profile officer involved settlement would be in the 5 to $6 million range. And today , it's common to see settlements in the 10 to $20 million range , or even more. And I think there's two important , relevant examples here. In 2014 , a 12 year old boy named Tamir Rice was killed by officers in Ohio. And it's relevant to this case because officers arrived after a report that someone was holding a gun. It turned out Tamir was holding a toy gun , and within three seconds of arrival , without any investigation , they shot him dead. And it's similar to this case where the officer saw Kanoa running without conducting any sort of investigation at all , turned and immediately shot him. The year following Tamir Rice death in 2015 , a man named Walter Scott was shot in the back in South Carolina while he was fleeing. While he was running away , he was an unarmed man running away from an officer , similar to this situation where Kanoa was running away not from a police officer , but from someone shooting at him , and Officer Gold shot him in the back. So we have some real similarities in all three cases , all three very high profile tragedies , both of the Tamir Rice and the Walter Scott settlements settled in the 5 to $6 million range. And so , you see , from a decade ago to now , real , real , substantial increases in the absolute dollar value of these settlements that departments and municipalities are willing to pay in these high profile , officer involved shootings.
S1:
S7: And it really depends on the public and the policymakers how effective those damages awards will be because as I as I noted , they don't directly change practices moving forward , right ? The hope is that they will incentivize cities and police departments to change the way they conduct themselves going forward , but that can depend upon where that money comes from. So , for example , in this case , the money is is not coming. My understanding is not coming directly from the police department. It is so the police is not directly incentivized to change the way it does business. The city , however , should be right. It's also it's a little unclear how it can be. I know San Diego , like most cities , also has insurance. Um , and even and even though this is a big part of the public liability , uh , uh , fund , um , it is still probably a very small or minuscule part , uh , a component of the overall San Diego city budget. And so I think that the public really needs to be to continue paying attention to this and say , hey , what are you doing to prevent this sort of tragedy from happening in the future ? You can't just assume that because of large reward has been paid out , that it's going to change the way the police department does business. I think the public really needs to be focusing on this. And and I'm very glad to see that the media is really focusing on this and really figure out , hey , what went wrong here ? How do we prevent this from happening in the future ? You shouldn't be incentivized , even if you don't even care about people's civil rights and preventing tragedies like this in the future. If you only care about fiscal responsibility , you should be incentivized to not allow this sort of thing to happen in the future.
S1:
S7: Generally speaking , they're much more aware of policing issues. They're much less like , I've been doing this work for about 30 years now , and certainly in the past five years there , there's been much less reflexive belief that what the police are telling you is how things actually happened. And that's in part because , um , of body camera footage from officers , from , uh , individuals like Darnell Frazier , who filmed the entire nine minute killing of George Floyd. Um , and then you , you it allows the public to compare that video evidence with the police reports that often come out without without regard to the video evidence and are directly contradicted by the video evidence that makes the public less likely to just accept that what the police are saying is true. I think there's also just a greater with more diversity in our country and more individuals being able to understand , um , and they have children who , as Councilmember Foster said , you know , this could have been my son or their kids have , um , you know , friends who are more likely , you know , black and Latino are more likely to be impacted by police violence , and people are just tired of this. More than I've seen than in the than before 2020. They're tired of it. They know what the police are telling them. It's not always true. And they know these shootings can be prevented because they are more sophisticated. And I think that provides a some level of hope. Are we at least having the opportunity to prevent these sorts of police killings ? Whether we do or not depends on our will and our ability to really pressure cities and police departments to make the necessary changes ? Hmm.
S1: Professor fields , anything to add to that ? Yes.
S5: I think it's important to look at the trend in settlements over the last five years in this broader context. The last five years has been a really interesting time. In the police reform space. After George Floyd's murder in 2020 , there was really an unprecedented appetite for structural police reforms , the types of reforms that might reduce these types of unnecessary tragedies. But as you moved into 2021 , the political focus shifted. A lot of the municipalities that had previously committed to reallocate funds or change training behaviors quietly reversed course on that. And of course , now the national appetite is such that it's politically unpalatable to really push for the sorts of structural police reforms that might be necessary to reduce these types of officer involved shootings in the future. But the importance of looking at these high dollar value settlements and the trends towards greater accountability , at least at least civilly , shows that the public has public consciousness , has not waned on this point. Professor Lopez is exactly right. There's greater public engagement on the issue of police accountability and police reform than there ever has been. And that hasn't changed , even if the political winds of the last five years has. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S7: I will say , just to follow up on what Professor Fields said. You know , the engagement , the great engagement on on preventing these sorts of incidents and structural police reform. We're seeing it everywhere. And that's because these sorts of killings are happening everywhere. Ferguson was in Missouri. Breonna Taylor was killed in Kentucky. And I've seen this across the country. Regardless of political background , everyone is more interested in stopping these sorts of killings. And the question how you stop those ? Again , it depends on on the particular jurisdiction to some extent. But generally speaking , we know a couple of things. We know that police do too much and they are we can't expect them to do everything well. And so one of the things I think that we need to do is really have police focus on what they should be focusing on , which is intervening to prevent precipitous violence and let other people take care of other things like responding to people mental health crisis , like doing the community building work to sort of prevent these sorts of , you know , beefs from , from percolating in the first place. Secondly , we really need to be paying close attention to who we're hiring. There's been a a false narrative that we are in a hiring crisis with policing , and that's just not the case. We've seen policing has gone up , policing has gone down over the past five years , and homicides have gone down after the pandemic everywhere , regardless of whether policing have has there are more police or less police in a particular jurisdiction ? What's important is to hire the right people to be police officers. And you can fewer right people. Being police officers is much better in terms of effectiveness of policing and safety for the public than just hiring more people , lowering standards , especially to hire more officers. So communities really need to be careful that they're not just looking at how many police they have , but what's the quality of police they have , how well are they being trained ? How well are they being supervised , how stringent are their policies ? And if you if you look in again , how those things are working will vary from place to place. But you really do need to be focused fundamentally on making sure that you're hiring the right people to do the right work.
S1: That is great insight. I've been speaking with Kristy Lopez , a professor at Georgetown Law. Professor , thank you so very much.
S6: Thank you.
S1: And also Sean Fields. He's a professor of law at Cal Western Law School. Professor. Thank you.
S5: Thank you so much for your focus on this important issue. Anytime.
S1: Anytime. That's our show for today.
S8: I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
