Columbus, OH

The Columbus Division of Police (CDP) has paid $19.79 million in documented police misconduct settlements from 2010 to 2023. Columbus is one of a small number of cities in this dataset operating under a consent decree - a settlement agreement with the Ohio Attorney General entered in 2021 following a pattern of excessive force findings.

The anchor case is the $10 million settlement paid in 2021 to the family of Andre Hill, a 47-year-old Black man shot and killed by Officer Adam Coy on December 22, 2020. Hill was holding a cell phone when Coy shot him in a garage; Coy did not activate his body camera before the shooting. Coy was fired and charged with murder; he was convicted of murder in 2022 and sentenced to six to nine years in prison.

A second high-profile case involves the shooting of Ma'Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old killed by Officer Nicholas Reardon on April 20, 2021 - the same day as the Derek Chauvin verdict. Bryant was holding a knife and appeared to be attacking another person when Reardon shot her. The city settled the Bryant family's lawsuit for $1.5 million in 2022.

Columbus entered a consent decree with the Ohio Attorney General in August 2021, requiring reforms to use-of-force policies, officer accountability, and community oversight. The decree was the first of its kind negotiated by an Ohio attorney general.

For insurance underwriters, the Columbus dataset illustrates the actuarial impact of consent decrees on forward liability: the department's settlement rate has declined since 2021, suggesting that the reform process has reduced ongoing exposure. However, the Andre Hill case demonstrates that even departments with active oversight can generate catastrophic single-incident liability.