If anybody knows that it costs a pretty penny to maintain a police state, it has to be New York. Maintaining the boys in blue costs New York on average $29M dollars a day. You’d think that working such an expensive job would keep these public servants on their toes but no — the NYPD racks up dozens of millions of dollars in civil lawsuits and keeps serial violators on the payroll! Patch has coverage:
Two lists released by The Legal Aid Society Tuesday show what officers amassed the highest lawsuit payouts and were named as defendants in the most civil rights lawsuits.
…The analysis comes after Legal Aid advocates found that NYPD misconduct lawsuits for 2023 cost nearly $115 million…Altogether, lawsuits accused NYPD cops of misconduct have cost $548 million since 2018, the analysis found.
If you’d like to see the full list of the highest lawsuit payouts or which officers are the most serial offenders, you can access them here and here.
The lawsuits form a very expensive patch work. One officer was sued for fabricating evidence that earned someone two years in jail. One officer, David Grieco, has had 48 civil cases filed against him since 2023. It is hard enough to find a 3L willing to read 48 cases, imagine being the subject of that many.
In the summer of 2020, it was very common to hear discussions about the role that police play in our legal system, our budgeting, and how their daily functioning trades off with other social institutions in dire need of funding like schools, hospitals and the like. When the inevitable conversations about rampant lawlessness and the need to be tough on crime come back in to vogue, it is very easy to imagine the defendant as some hardened criminal who wants to see the world burn. Take a moment to recognize that meals can do a better job of curbing crime than batons, police officers are frequently the ones facing the law, and that the real answer to the war on crime could be changing how we decide who gets funded.
These NYPD Cops Cost Taxpayers $65M, Named In Most Civil Cases: Study [Patch]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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