New York City is on track to pay out more than $100 million in police misconduct payouts for the second year in a row, according to an analysis by the Legal Aid Society.
The municipal government has already paid out roughly $50.5 million in the first seven months of the year, and median payouts for misconduct lawsuits continue to rise to the highest level in five years, the public defender group says.
“It’s a troubling trend that the payout amount is still continuing to increase,” said Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney for Legal Aid’s Special Litigation Unit. “Many of these officers named in these lawsuits already have a history of misconduct, so that to me shows a troubling continuation of the NYPD accountability and disciplinary system not really working very well.”
Legal Aid’s analysis is based on data regularly released by the comptroller’s office, meaning the final totals for the year could be even higher. The analysis doesn’t count money paid out by the city comptroller’s office prior to the lawsuits ending up in court.
The city has come to a disposition, either by settlement or verdict, in 461 misconduct cases so far this year, with the median payout sitting at $25,000, according to the analysis. That number has been steadily increasing since 2018, when it was $10,500.
“In the past seven months, the city has already shelled out over $50 million to compensate New Yorkers who are brutalized by the NYPD, people who were wrongfully arrested, wrongfully detained, people who faced NYPD, who faced excessive use of force,” Wong said.
Last year, the city shelled out more than $121 million in police misconduct lawsuit settlements in 2022 — the highest in at least five years.
Roughly 47% of the payout money comes from three wrongful conviction lawsuits.
Emmanuel Cooper, who spent 27 years in prison for the 1992 murder of MTA token booth clerk Andres Barretto before his conviction was overturned in 2020, got a $10 million settlement in April.
And in March, the city shelled out another $10 million settlement, this one to Felipe Rodrigruez, who also spent 27 years behind bars for the brutal 1987 murder of a mom of three before he was exonerated in 2019.
The city also paid out $3.68 million to Jawuan Fraser, who was locked up for two years awaiting trial on a bogus robbery charge after an undercover officer tried to pressure him into selling drugs and he tried to take a photo of the cop’s ID.
Many of the payouts come from violent arrests during the George Floyd protests, according to Legal Aid.
They include a $415,000 total payment to two state lawmakers — former Assemblywoman Diana Richardson and Sen. Zellnor Myrie, both Brooklyn Democrats — who were rammed with bike wheels by the NYPD, pepper-sprayed and roughly arrested at a May 2020 George Floyd protest outside Barclays Center in Brooklyn, according to a 2021 lawsuit.
Earlier this week, the NYPD agreed to reform how it polices demonstrations in the city as part of a landmark settlement resolving several protest cases brought after the 2020 George Floyd demonstrations.
Wong said that some smaller-amount settlements and judgments also point to a trend of police officers making false statements during criminal proceedings — in one case, cops searching an apartment claimed that a suspect was seen possessing marijuana when they showed up, when the reality was the suspect arrived after police entered the apartment and had no pot.
“Civil lawsuits, they should still be paid attention to by the department, by others, because it could be a canary in the coal mine situation,” Wong said.
The police department pinned the payouts on the misdeeds of previous administrations.
“The NYPD carefully analyzes allegations in civil lawsuits as well as trends in litigation against the Department,” Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Tarik Sheppard said. “A substantial portion of the payouts in 2023 relate to a number of wrongful convictions that occurred decades ago. These cases, and the resulting payments, do not speak to the NYPD’s policies and practices today. In fact, there has been a nearly 20% reduction in actions filed against the NYPD from 2020 to 2022, and an over 50% reduction since 2013.”
