Research Briefing: Police Brutality Bonds – Cops & Capitalism Summer Webinar Series
Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE)
This webinar explores ACRE’s groundbreaking research on cities’ use of Police Brutality Bonds, the bonds issued to pay for police brutality settlements. Police brutality bonds generate fees for Wall Street firms like Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, and interest payments for investors, allowing them to literally profit from police violence. Borrowing can also drastically increase the costs of police violence, but these costs are not reflected in the official police budget. The webinar covers how ACRE did the research for the report, how bonds work, some of ACRE’s data sources and what other policing costs might be hiding in city budgets.