华盛顿邮报 美国警察因执法不当花费数十亿和解金(2)

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。

1 lawsuits   

n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Lawsuits involving property rights and farming and grazing rights increased markedly. 涉及财产权，耕作与放牧权的诉讼案件显著地增加。 来自辞典例句
• I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England. 全英国的人算我官司打得最多，赢的也多，输的也多。 来自辞典例句

2 offenses   

n.进攻( offense的名词复数 )；（球队的）前锋；进攻方法；攻势

参考例句：

• It's wrong of you to take the child to task for such trifling offenses. 因这类小毛病责备那孩子是你的不对。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Thus, Congress cannot remove an executive official except for impeachable offenses. 因此，除非有可弹劾的行为，否则国会不能罢免行政官员。 来自英汉非文学 - 行政法

3 taxpayers   

纳税人，纳税的机构( taxpayer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Finance for education comes from taxpayers. 教育经费来自纳税人。
• She was declaiming against the waste of the taxpayers' money. 她慷慨陈词猛烈抨击对纳税人金钱的浪费。

4 seizure   

n.没收；占有；抵押

参考例句：

• The seizure of contraband is made by customs.那些走私品是被海关没收的。
• The courts ordered the seizure of all her property.法院下令查封她所有的财产。

5 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

6 mounds   

土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆

参考例句：

• We had mounds of tasteless rice. 我们有成堆成堆的淡而无味的米饭。
• Ah! and there's the cemetery' - cemetery, he must have meant. 'You see the mounds? 啊，这就是同墓，”——我想他要说的一定是公墓，“看到那些土墩了吗？

7 violations   

违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸

参考例句：

• This is one of the commonest traffic violations. 这是常见的违反交通规则之例。
• These violations of the code must cease forthwith. 这些违犯法规的行为必须立即停止。