The foremost gripe about cops getting qualified immunity for their violations of a person’s civil rights is that the individuals who commit the wrong skate from liability.  Cop does wrong. Cop shrugs. Cop walks away unscathed. It’s not exactly a utilitarian message to police to stop harming people, lying, concealing evidence, planting evidence, framing innocent people or killing kids for no reason.

But then, in those rare instances where qualified immunity doesn’t insulate the cop from liability, and you get a judgment against them, what’s next?  One of the most glaring disconnects in the law is that payment of the judgment doesn’t always happen, and this is particularly true when the judgment is for millions and the judgment debtor is a cop.

Have you met bankruptcy? Have you ever tried to get blood from a rock? Did it happen in Cleveland?

David Ayers says he feared for his life during the nearly 12 years he spent in a prison for a murder that evidence showed he did not commit.

The City of Cleveland says that it owes him nothing and that the judgment was against the two homicide detectives who helped convict him, not the city. It further argues that the judgment was erased in a bankruptcy filed by one of the detectives.

It appears Cleveland is planning a similar strategy over a $5.5 million verdict returned in September against a police officer who fatally shot Kenny Smith outside a nightclub in 2012. That verdict has been appealed, but the city in November hired a bankruptcy lawyer for the officer.

It’s not that Ohio law doesn’t require a municipal employer to indemnify a judgment against its employee in the course of employment. It does.

Lawyers for Mr. Ayers’s and Mr. Smith’s families say they are outraged by the practice. They say Ohio law requires municipalities to pay judgments for employees sued for acts committed during their employment.

But outrage, nice as it may feel, doesn’t make money appear in bank accounts.

Cleveland said it “does not have a policy of avoiding the payment of its legal obligations, including judgments.” It said the judgments were against individual police officers, not the city. It said in a statement Friday that it had no obligation to pay Mr. Ayers after being dismissed from his lawsuit.

The direct liability of a municipality is subject to being able to prove a Monell claim, that the wrong was committed because of an official municipal policy. It’s a very hard claim to prove, and usually results in dismissal of claims against the municipality, even if claims are allowed to proceed against the individual officers despite qualified immunity.

Cleveland’s contention that the suit was against the individual police officers after the claims against the city were tossed is, of course, total hogwash.  Even though the city may not have direct liability, its duty to indemnify the cops, and hence be liable for the judgment, exists anyway.

But Cleveland just won’t pay.

While Cleveland has been hailed as a comeback city, it is also under pressure to fix a troubled police department that has cost the city millions of dollars in judgments and settlements of lawsuits for abusive behavior by officers. Cleveland paid a total of $3 million in 2014 to the families of two unarmed people killed in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire.

Bad cops doing bad things can be a very expensive proposition. Most cities, if they aren’t otherwise insured for such losses (in which case their insurance carriers would pay), maintain a reserve fund to pay for verdicts or settlements.  Apparently, Cleveland is either tapped out or just doesn’t feel like allocating scarce resources to pay off the judgments of its bad cops. And so it’s refusing to do so.

Whatcha gonna do about it?  Seize a few busses and sell them on eBay? Try it. The eBay market for used Cleveland busses isn’t very good, and the police will not take kindly to anyone taking the city’s busses.

The solution would seem clear, returning to the court that issued the judgment and obtaining an order from the court directing the city to indemnify its cops and pay the judgment.

Despite whatever squabbling that once surrounded the underlying conduct, with Cuyahoga County District Attorney Tim McGinty pulling his pants down to do the dirty, the question of wrongfulness of the police conduct is now resolved for the purpose of civil liability.  While there may be no will to indict, there’s no denying that a civil jury found the cops culpable, and awarded damages to the victim.

One might hope that once that award is affirmed on appeal, because even cops get to appeal the verdict against them, and even though it’s been years since the harm occurred, the wrongfulness was finally unearthed, the §1983 suit was initiated and litigated to verdict, the verdict appealed, and the matter of liability and damages finally resolved, there is still the problem of collecting.

At every stage along the way, there are things that can, and usually do go wrong. But with fortitude, tenacity and lawyers with deep enough pockets that they can maintain the fight until they reach the end, the victims of police malfeasance finally reach that place where compensation for the wrongful ruination of their lives should happen. And then it doesn’t, because Cleveland says, “welllllllllll, nah.”

The lawyers will be left with no choice but to go back to court, seek another order to compel the city to pay the judgment against its bad cops. Cleveland will oppose the judgment, arguing that if it had any liability, the case against it wouldn’t have been dismissed, and that since they would never permit cops on their dole to engage in bad conduct, the police officers against whom the judgment was obtained did not do wrong in the course of their employment, but were wild cowboys, gone rogue, acting outside of the scope of their employment, and thus not the city’s responsibility.

In the meantime, David Ayers has to eat. But that’s not Cleveland’s fault. Cleveland is just as outraged at what these bad cops did as Ayers is, but the city has a duty to its taxpayers not to throw good money after bad. It’s just one of those terrible things that can’t be helped in Cleveland.