Police

Study: Reimbursing Victims of Police Property Damage Would Cost Very Little

And yet governments deny reimbursement claims more often than approving them, according to the Institute for Justice.

Joe Lancaster | 9.15.2026 1:45 PM

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Civil libertarians and longtime Reason readers are no doubt familiar with police raids, often at the hands of SWAT teams, that inflict considerable damage on the properties and psyches of innocent people.

In its upcoming term, the U.S. Supreme Court has the opportunity to consider whether police owe compensation for damage they cause while raiding an innocent person's home. A new report tries to demonstrate how much, or how little, that would actually cost.

"In recent years, there have been a number of prominent news stories about SWAT teams inflicting major damage on innocent people's property while pursuing fugitives," the Institute for Justice (I.J.) announced in a press release. "And often neither the local government nor the owner's insurance will pay for the damage."

I.J. calls its new report on the subject "the first national study to quantify how often property owners seek compensation from local governments for damage caused by law enforcement—and how often governments honor those requests."

Because both federal and state governments enjoy sovereign immunity, meaning they can't be sued without their consent, insurance companies typically don't pay out when governments cause damage. That puts the onus for reimbursement on those same jurisdictions that caused the damage in the first place.

The Fifth Amendment says that one's property may not "be taken for public use, without just compensation." Most often, this happens when governments seize private property for a public works project.

I.J. argues that........

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