Atlanta, GA

The Atlanta Police Department (APD) has paid $17.5 million in documented police misconduct settlements from 2015 to 2024.

The most prominent recent case is the $2 million settlement approved in 2024 for Messiah Young and Taniyah Pilgrim, two students from Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College who were tased and dragged from their car by APD officers on May 30, 2020, during protests following George Floyd's death. Body camera footage showed officers smashing the car window and tasing the students without warning. Six officers were fired following the incident.

Atlanta also generated significant protest-related liability in 2020. Multiple civil rights lawsuits were filed by protesters alleging excessive force; several were settled for amounts totaling approximately $3 million.

A separate line of exposure involves the Buckhead neighborhood policing controversy and the 2023 killing of Manuel Esteban Paez Teran ("Tortuguita") by Georgia State Patrol officers during the "Stop Cop City" protests. While the Teran killing involved state troopers rather than APD, it generated federal civil rights scrutiny of Georgia law enforcement broadly and contributed to ongoing civil rights litigation in Atlanta.

For insurance underwriters, the Atlanta dataset illustrates the actuarial risk of departments in major media markets: the HBCU students case generated national attention and accelerated the settlement timeline. The six officer firings following the incident demonstrate that even departments without consent decrees can face significant accountability pressure when footage is publicly released.