华盛顿邮报 美国警察因执法不当花费数十亿和解金(2)

（单词翻译）

We've heard about lawsuits¹ involving fatal shootings, whether it's Chauvin in the George Floyd case or Breonna Taylor, where the city will settle and pay millions of dollars.

我们听说过一些涉及致命枪击的诉讼，无论是乔治·弗洛伊德案中的肖文，还是布里安娜·泰勒案，市政府将和解并支付数百万美元。

Those stories and those cases, they make the headlines, they make the news.

那些故事和案例，会成为头条新闻，成为新闻。

But these cases, where officers are the subject of numerous lawsuits -- 10, 12, 13 -- for much smaller offenses², but they're happening repeatedly.

但是在这些案件中，警官们被起诉的次数很多——10次,12次,13次——他们犯的罪要小得多，但这样的事经常发生。

So what we wanted to do was find out how many officers around the country and various police forces have been the subject of multiple payments.

所以，我们想要做的是找出全国各地有多少警察和有多少不同的警察部队是多次支付的对象。

We dove into 40,000 payments in 25 cities around the country, and we found more than 7,600 officers...

我们深入调查了全国25个城市的4万名警员，发现超过7600名警员……

Wow.

哇。

...who were the subject of multiple payments, totaling more than a billion dollars -- that's "billion," with a B, dollars -- by taxpayers³ across the country.

他们是全国纳税人多次支付的对象，总计超过10亿美元——这是“十亿” 美元。

These are officers who aren't being accused of misconduct just once or twice in their careers.

这些警官在他们的职业生涯中，不止被指控过一两次不当行为。

These are police officers who are being accused 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 times for pretty much the same type of infractions over and over again.

这些警察被指控10次、11次、12次、13次、14次，因为他们一次又一次地做出几乎相同的违法行为。

You know, excessive force, wrongful arrest, illegal search and seizure⁴, like involving Mr. Murray's home, officers who are the subject of these repeated allegations and these repeated lawsuits,

过度使用武力，非法逮捕，非法搜查和扣押，比如涉及默里先生家的案件，这些警官是这些重复的指控和诉讼的对象，

and cities that are basically paying this money to make these cases go away because the majority of these cases result in settlements.

市政府基本上是支付这些钱来让这些案件消失，因为这些案件大多以和解告终。

They don't even go to trial. They result in settlements, like Mr. Murray's case in Detroit.

他们甚至不上法庭。 他们最终达成和解，就像底特律的默里案一样。

Can you talk to me about how you figured all of this out, how you were able to get these numbers about the number of officers who've had multiple lawsuits against them?

你能跟我说说你是怎么弄明白这些的吗，你是怎么弄到这些被多次起诉的警官人数的?

One of the most challenging parts about this investigative project was getting the data.

这个调查项目最具挑战性的部分之一是获取数据。

And myself and Steven Rich, who's the database editor at The Washington Post, we had to literally⁵ go through mounds⁶ and mounds of documents -- over 40,000 records -- and it took about a year to pull this whole investigative project together.

我和史蒂芬·里奇，他是华盛顿邮报的数据库编辑，我们必须翻看成堆的文件——超过4万份记录——我们花了大约一年的时间才把整个调查项目整合在一起。

What we had to do was, we had to go to a city and find out if that city kept track of the payments.

我们要做的是，我们要去一个城市，看看这个城市是否有付款记录。

Then we had to go through those records and pull out the ones that were basically civil-rights violations⁷, as opposed to a police officer who was in a car and struck another car or things of that nature.

然后我们必须仔细检查这些记录，找出那些基本上是侵犯公民权利的记录，而不是一个警察在车里撞了另一辆车或类似的东西。

What we also found was that very few cities recorded the information based on the name of the police officer.

我们还发现，很少有城市根据警察的名字记录信息。

So while we have the data on settlements or payouts involving police officers, we didn't have the names of the police officers involved.

因此，虽然我们有涉事警察的和解或支付数据，但我们不知道涉案警察的姓名。