This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 19th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown, where individual cops aren't held accountable for their misconduct

and wreak havoc on local government budgets

when cities are forced to pay out.

Patrick Tuoy of the Better Cities Project details how cities can reassert their power over

police misconduct.

A lot of police reforms that have been offered by the feds has stalled out, the ones that are

sort of most important as policy priorities from the perspective of the Cato Institute,

qualified immunity of course has been a big sticking point.

A couple of states now have gotten rid of it and I believe New York City has also gotten rid of it, at least for police, but what

role can localities play in making sure that they're not left holding the bag when there is widespread

police misconduct or police misconduct is just very costly.

So certainly police put public officials at the local level on the front lines of this.

They are the first to suffer, whether it's unrest or like you say, lawsuits, and they have the greatest interest in policing their

police and making sure that public servants behave themselves. Yet oftentimes we

see city leadership waiting for states or the federal government to act as if they cannot themselves.

And whether it is qualified immunity, civil asset forfeiture, federal tax

task forces, cities absolutely can solve these problems for themselves.

So let's take those in turn, let's start with task forces.

A lot of people don't really understand the degree to which accountability can be undermined

when local police are literally deputized feds.

So I live in Kansas City and a few years ago the federal government came in with Operation

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