Misconduct settlements cost $500M over six years

NEW YORK>> The city has paid more than $500 million in police misconduct settlements over the past six years, including nearly $115 million in 2023, according to an analysis of data released by the Legal Aid Society on Thursday.

Fewer lawsuits are being settled each year, the society found, but the median payout has more than doubled over that period, rising from $10,500 on average in 2018 to $25,000 last year.

A growing number of such settlements in recent years have resulted from lawsuits filed by people after their criminal convictions were vacated by the courts. Many of those convictions dated to the 1990s, when soaring crime rates led New

York City law enforcement agencies to pursue arrests at all costs. Those affected were overwhelmingly Black or Latino.

A city spokesperson said Wednesday that there had been an increase in convictions being reversed and that settling the lawsuits arising from the reversals avoided protracted litigation and provided justice to people who had been convicted wrongfully.

The New York Times reported last year that one police detective, Louis N. Scarcella, had cost the city and state $110 million in settlements involving 14 people whose convictions were overturned. Scarcella, who has been accused of concocting false witness testimony and coercing confessions, has not been charged criminally.

Jennvine Wong, a Legal Aid staff attorney with the organization’s Cop Accountability Project, said that many factors could be contributing to what she called the “staggering amount of money” the city has spent on police misconduct settlements in recent years. The settlements, she said, come as the city is “pouring money into policing, and violent policing, rather than investing into public services and social safety nets.”

In 2022, the city paid $135 million in settlements stemming from 971 lawsuits, the society said in the analysis released Thursday. That was the highest total in five years, and it was driven by several payouts over $10 million, including one to Muhammad A. Aziz, whose conviction in the assassination of Malcolm X was vacated after he spent two decades in prison.

One factor fueling the increase in payouts more recently involves complaints stemming from the protests over the police killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd in 2020, Wong said. Last year, the city paid $13.7 million to settle a federal class-action lawsuit brought by protesters.

Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said it was “unfair to use lawsuit payouts from decadesold cases as a measure of how New York City police officers are doing our job today.”