New York Police Department (NYPD) misconduct lawsuits have cost the city more than $540 million the last six years, according to an analysis of government data released Thursday.
Since 2018, the lawsuits have totaled $548,047,141, including $114,586,723 for 2023 alone, according to The Legal Aid Society. The real total payouts for police misconduct is almost certainly higher, since the data does not include matters that were settled with the comptroller’s office before formal litigation, according to the organization.
With few exceptions, the number of disposed lawsuits each year has decreased but the median payout has continued to grow. In 2018, there were 1,579 settlements, for a median payout of $10,500. By 2023, there were 801 lawsuits settled, at a median payout of $25,000.
Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at The Legal Aid Society, said the total amount of funds from the payouts was “staggering” and said it reveals a system that fails to hold officers accountable.
They should need to carry malpractice insurance like doctors do. Let the insurance companies weed out the costly bullies.
If you take it out of the general pension/ retirement funds, you’ll create a culture of self regulation, where the more senior, closer to retirement individuals, will absolutely not put up with some dumb ass rookie jeopardizing their money. You want to get change from people? Go after their money. I really only think you can solve police misconduct by changing the culture, so there has to be some kind of feedback mechanism that does this. This is the mechanism I’ve thought of. There has to be a kind of ‘collective punishment’ to change the culture.
You may underestimate the damage of a lawsuit. The first really great ‘exemplar’ lawsuit that comes through will absolutely bankrupt all retirees, good or bad, as that kind of fund is usually tightly managed and rarely enough. It’ll be crushed.
If you want to sic it to the bad cops but not the ones that actually did as good a job as possible, collective punishment is no good here. In fact, it’s still a war crime.
Well the union will have to carry insurance (obviously). And that premium will be a function of the departments performance.
if a department can’t get insurance than it can’t operate.
Its really not as difficult as you make it out to be, but yes, it should be painful for an entire department when there is misconduct.
Too difficult to implement. What other professionals need to collectively pay fines and judgements from their retirement savings? What’s the precedent?
Difficult to implement?
Easy as heck to implement. Union pensions are managed as a pool. When a union member commits a violation, it gets paid for out of the pool and the entire union suffers. The first time that a police officer violates civil rights, that officer will get crucified and it will never happen again.
In the current system, the community paying for the police foots the bill and there is no accountability. In the system I’m proposing the police are directly accountable for conduct, with more Sr. personal being more accountable (because they are more heavily vested in the pension).
This approach can even be used to promote furthering the development of unions. Its a win win win.
They’d sue to stop it and you’d be forced to pay it all back.