Study: Reimbursing Victims of Police Property Damage Would Cost Very Little
· Reason
Civil libertarians and longtime Reason readers are no doubt familiar with police raids, often at the hands of SWAT teams, that inflict considerable damage on the properties and psyches of innocent people.
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In its upcoming term, the U.S. Supreme Court has the opportunity to consider whether police owe compensation for damage they cause while raiding an innocent person's home. A new report tries to demonstrate how much, or how little, that would actually cost.
"In recent years, there have been a number of prominent news stories about SWAT teams inflicting major damage on innocent people's property while pursuing fugitives," the Institute for Justice (I.J.) announced in a press release. "And often neither the local government nor the owner's insurance will pay for the damage."
I.J. calls its new report on the subject "the first national study to quantify how often property owners seek compensation from local governments for damage caused by law enforcement—and how often governments honor those requests."
Because both federal and state governments enjoy sovereign immunity, meaning they can't be sued without their consent, insurance companies typically don't pay out when governments cause damage. That puts the onus for reimbursement on those same jurisdictions that caused the damage in the first place.
The Fifth Amendment says that one's property may not "be taken for public use, without just compensation." Most often, this happens when governments seize private property for a public works project.
I.J. argues that pursuing a suspect through an innocent person's home invokes a similar principle. "Much like people are due just compensation if the government decides it must take their home to build a road or school," the report says, innocent property owners "are due compensation when law enforcement deliberately damages or destroys their property—in effect, 'takes' it—for the public good, such as apprehending a fugitive."
But how often does this happen, and what does it cost? Between 2015 and 2023, the report's authors—former I.J. research analyst David Warren, data scientist Jason Tiezzi, and I.J. assistant director of strategic research Mindy Menjou—identified "more than 2,700 claims for law enforcement property damage across 222 local jurisdictions," a subset of the "1,027 local jurisdictions home to the nation's largest law enforcement agencies with SWAT teams."
Results varied across jurisdictions, but certain trends emerged. "Most claims involved residential damage from routine law enforcement activities, though 12% involved tactical raids," per the report. Claims "involving vehicle damage were more likely to be paid than not, especially when spike strips were involved. Meanwhile, claims for residential damage resulting from tactical raids and general residential damage were nearly three times more likely to be denied than paid."
"Among all claims where the outcome could be determined, 60% were denied," the researchers determined. "In nearly a third of denials (31%), the government either gave no reason for denying claims or the reason could not be determined from the records provided. In another 48%, the government's sole reason for denial was that the law enforcement officers' actions were legal and within the scope of their employment or that the government was immune."
"More than 90% of claimants were not the target of the law enforcement action that led to the damage, and more than 70% of those had no relationship to the target," the report reveals. "Still, local governments denied 41% of these owners' claims." Claims were less likely to be paid out if the claimant was the target of the investigation, though cities also paid out only 24 percent of claims filed by family members, 21 percent filed by landlords, and 16 percent of claims filed by those with some other relationship to the suspect.
Yet even the officers themselves fully expected the government to pay out: "We found hundreds of examples of officers telling owners how to file claims after damage had occurred and in some cases even suggesting the municipality would pay for the damage."
Despite the high denial rate, these are often not exorbitant claims. "The median claim amount was $1,260, a tiny amount in the scheme of municipal budgets but more than most Americans have on hand to cover an emergency expense," the authors wrote, citing a Bankrate report finding that less than half of Americans could cover a sudden $1,000 expense. "Some claims are far costlier: About 1 in 10 claims sought $10,000 or more."
Earlier this year, Reason's Billy Binion reported on Amy Hadley and Carlos Pena; in each case, police damaged their property while searching for a suspect that turned out not to be inside. Hadley's home suffered $16,000 in damage, while the damage to Pena's business totaled more than $60,000, requiring him to relocate.
In each case, police declined to reimburse for the damage caused, even though the property owners had done nothing wrong. And in each case, federal courts determined that police had no obligation to pay reimbursement so long as they were acting "reasonably" or in a "lawful" manner.
In 2020, when a fugitive barricaded himself inside a Texas woman's home, police drove an armored vehicle through the front door—even though they had the keys, gate code, and garage door opener. Again, police refused to reimburse for the damage. In May 2026, after years of legal wrangling, a court finally ruled in the homeowner's favor and awarded her $60,000 plus interest.
Even when accounting for the higher claim amounts, cities could easily afford to pay out. "In a given year, the average jurisdiction faced just one or two property damage claims," the I.J. authors found. "On average, if the municipalities in our study had to pay every property damage claim in our dataset, the average jurisdiction would have been on the hook for only about $6,500 per year." That's also assuming every claim is paid out, when some might be denied for unrelated reasons or settled for a lower amount.
Besides, the researchers found little correlation between denials and claim amounts, suggesting money was not the determining factor in whether to grant reimbursement.
Of course, it's worth noting that in each of these cases, police departments are damaging the homes of people who are not accused of committing a crime and then refusing to reimburse them.
This practice could change in the near future. I.J. is representing Hadley and Pena, and it has asked the Supreme Court to take up their cases.
"The Fifth Amendment requires that the government provide just compensation when it damages someone's property for a public good, like getting a criminal off the streets, and this report makes it clear that doing so would not bankrupt local governments," says I.J. senior attorney Jeffrey Redfern. "The Supreme Court has a great opportunity to make sure governments are providing just compensation during these instances by granting our petitions."
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