NYPD Still Shelling Out Millions In Lawsuit Settlements Every Year, Still Protecting Its Worst Officers From Accountability
The NYPD's refusal to engage in nearly any form of accountability means it's up to the city's residents to pay billions for police work that adds tens of millions to the tab with lawsuit settlements.
In 2022, the NYPD cost residents $121 million in settlements. This came on top of the NYPD's budget, which cleared $11 billion. Sure, it's the largest local law enforcement agency in the United States, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be doing something to cut expenses that should be considered discretionary. Imposing better discipline would deter officers from violating rights and regulations so often it takes another hundred million to set things right.
NYPD officers routinely engage in misconduct, racking up thousands of complaints. The NYPD routinely refuses to discipline officers, preferring to exonerate them in closed sessions that rarely result in discipline of any severity.
This total of 207 substantiated force allegations is based on the data provided to OIG-NYPD by CCRB.The total number of substantiated force allegations represents approximately 2.0% of the more than 10,000 allegations of force received by CCRB from 2010 to 2014.
That's from an Inspector General's report published in 2015. Despite nearly a decade of being provided the opportunity to learn from its mistakes (along with a constant stream of high-profile incidents that highlighted endemic problems in US policing), the NYPD remains as awful as ever.
Last year's total was $121 million in settlements. This year isn't looking much better, according to the numbers compiled by Akela Lacy for The Intercept. In fact, it might be even worse by the time the final totals are in.
The New YorkPolice Department has been making headlines for the huge settlements paid out by the city in misconduct cases. In the first half of 2023, New York Citypaid more than $50 millionin lawsuits alleging misconduct by members of the NYPD.
That figure is on track to exceed $100 million by the end of the year - but even that total doesn't capture how much the city has to spend in cases where its cops are accused of everything from causing car accidents to beating innocent people.
The $100 million figure does not include lawsuits settled by the city prior to litigation, which reached $30 million in the first nine months of this year, according to data obtained from the office of the New York City Comptroller through a public records request. Pre-litigation settlements from July 2022 through September of this year totaled $50 million - meaning the city's payouts in such suits since July 2022, including those settled after litigation, rose to a total of around $280 million.
It's an obvious problem, one that results in at least another $100 million in expenditures, year after year after year after year. What has the NYPD done to stem the constantly rising tide of lawsuits and their subsequent settlements? Well, as Akela Lacy reported in October, it's done things like this:
NYPD Sgt. David Grieco, a cop with the street nickname of Bullethead," was named in at least 17 suits between his hiring in 2006 and his first promotion in 2016. After advancing to the rank of sergeant in 2017, he was named in at least eight more suits. That promotion came less than one week after Grieco was named in his 28th suit. Since his last promotion, Grieco has been named in at least 27 additional lawsuits. Payouts for suits naming Grieco exceeded $1 million this year.
[...]
Lt. Henry Daverin started at the NYPD in 2008 and promoted to sergeant in 2013. Daverin was named in at least 19 suits between 2013 and 2017, when he was promoted to his current role as lieutenant. Settled police misconduct suits that named Daverin have paid out at least $1.5 million since 2013.
[...]
Detective Abdiel Anderson was hired as a police officer in 2003. He was named in two lawsuits shortly afterward. In 2008, he was promoted to detective. Anderson has been named in at least 43 suits since then, with settled cases paying out more than half a million dollars.
That's how the NYPD is handling its misconduct. Whatever isn't deliberately ignored or immediately exonerated is apparently treated as an indicator of future success within the NYPD.
Not that the NYPD wants anyone to know this. Its misconduct record portal is deliberately incomplete, forcing those seeking complete information about officer misconduct to scour court records and file public records requests, the latter of which tends to result in litigation to actually liberate records the NYPD is legally required to hand over to records requesters.
Make no mistake: the laws in the NYPD's so-called transparency" effort are deliberate. They're as deliberate as the pre-trial settlements, which allow the NYPD to purchase presumed innocence by tying settlements to statements averring no admission of wrongdoing. Every time it does this, it keeps another misconduct record from entering its transparency" portal.
It's just insults piled on top of financial injury. Residents are already expected to cover the $11 billion-plus the NYPD demands just to cover its day-to-day expenses. Then they're asked to cover tens of millions in settlements, many of them occurring pre-trial, which means the city doesn't feel these are winnable despite the multiple immunity options (and rights exceptions) it has at its disposal. Throughout all of this, officers named in multiple lawsuits are rising through the ranks. And rather than get better at their jobs, their promotions tend to increase the frequency in which they're named in complaints and lawsuits.
The city is paying billions to pay a workforce with steadily decreasing value. And yet, little will change because the NYPD is too big and too powerful. And far too often, it has been given blanket support by whoever happens to be sitting in the mayor's office. The NYPD runs the town. Everyone in it is just expected to keep giving 'til it hurts. And then give some more.