Richmond, VA

The Richmond Police Department (RPD) has paid $8.45 million in documented police misconduct settlements from 2020 to 2024.

The largest single settlement is the $3.75 million paid in 2024 to the family of Jeremiah Ruffin, shot and killed by Officer Richard Johnson. The settlement was reached after a federal civil rights lawsuit was filed alleging excessive force.

Richmond also generated significant civil rights exposure during the 2020 George Floyd protests. RPD deployed tear gas and pepper spray on protesters on multiple occasions, including against demonstrators who had been declared to be in a lawful assembly. Multiple civil rights lawsuits were filed; several were settled for amounts totaling approximately $2 million.

For insurance underwriters, the Richmond dataset illustrates the actuarial risk of protest-related liability: a single protest response decision can generate multiple simultaneous civil rights claims across dozens of plaintiffs, creating aggregate exposure that exceeds the cost of any individual use-of-force incident. The $8.45 million total reflects a relatively short four-year window (2020-2024), suggesting the department's liability trajectory may continue to grow as pending cases resolve.