NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – New York City paid out over $500 million in police misconduct since 2018, according to an analysis of city data by the Legal Aid Society released on Thursday.
The Legal Aid Society highlighted that in the past six years, the payouts for the lawsuits cost taxpayers $548,047,14. Furthermore, they stated that the total payouts for police misconduct are actually predicted to be much higher as the data does not account for matters that were settled prior to formal litigation.
The analysis also revealed that the city paid nearly $115 million in lawsuits alleging police misconduct for 2023.
“The staggering amount of money taxpayers have to foot each year to cover alleged NYPD misconduct truly shocks the conscience, and this should enrage all New Yorkers,” said Jennvine Wong, an attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at The Legal Aid Society.
In 2023, there was a 51% increase in police misconduct complaints, reaching the highest level since 2012, according to the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
“These payouts, which now total more than half a billion dollars since 2018, are indicative of a system that both refuses and fails to hold offending officers accountable,” Wong said. “Rather than investing into public services and social safety nets, taxpayers are continually forced to cover the costs of violent policing.”
Citizens filed 5,604 complaints in 2023, a significant rise from the 3,700 complaints handled in 2022, according to the CCRB.
“It is blatantly misleading and unfair to use lawsuit payouts from decades-old cases as a measure of how New York City police officers are doing our job today" Patrick Hendry, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement to 1010 WINS. "Even in more recent cases, the city frequently chooses to settle even though police officers have done nothing wrong. Often, police officers aren’t even notified of those settlements and have no opportunity to clear their names.”