As the
cash-strapped City Council scours the mayor’s proposed budget for wiggle room,
a report shows the city spent $50.5 million more last fiscal year to settle
claims against the NYPD than it did the year previous.
And the
Bloomberg Administration has projected $180.1 million will be required to
settle judgments against the NYPD in the next fiscal year — ranging from claims
of wrongful death, excessive force, to traffic accidents or damaged property.
Leo Glickman, a
Brooklyn civil rights attorney, said his firm has compiled a list of court
records of a dozen police officers who have been the subject of multiple tort
claims and civil rights suits that have cost the city hundreds of thousands to
settle.
"If you had
a precinct-by-precinct breakdown for police misconduct lawsuits, you would find
some precincts are relatively unscathed and others are serial committers of
police misconduct," he said.
As cuts to child
care and other city services loom, some City Council members took aim at the
amount squirreled away in the mayor’s proposed $68.7 budget to pay out claims
against the NYPD during the budget hearing last week.
The city paid
$186.3 million in fiscal year 2011 in judgments against the NYPD compared to
$135.8 the previous fiscal year, according to numbers provided by City
Comptroller John Liu.
Overall, the
city has reduced payouts for personal injury and property damage by 7 percent,
according to Liu’s 2011 bi-annual report.
That report
noted that in 2006 the Bloomberg Administration had paid out only $93.2
million, nearly half of the latest annual payout total.
From 2005 to
2011, there was a 43 percent increase in the number of claims filed against the
NYPD, according to that same report Liu is required to release every other
year.
The issue of the
growing price tag was floated during the budget meeting Thursday.
When asked about
the cost to the city – and whether stop and frisk influenced it - during a
budget hearing Thursday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly didn’t rule out that the
controversial program may have influenced payout totals.
“It is a
significant amount, and some of it maybe associated with Stop, Question and
Frisk," Kelly said. "You have to look at the totality, and you have
to look at the effects of the tactics and strategies and practices that are in
place.”
His remarks came
a day after a federal court judge OKed class action status to a suit that
alleges the NYPD’s stop and frisk program may have systematically violated the
civil rights of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who had been stopped as
far back as 2005.
After the
hearing, Kelly said the city was too quick to settle suits out of court. He
said the NYPD is working with the corporate council’s office to implement
‘lessons learned’ from the payouts to reduce the risk of future claims. Historically,
the NYPD was only made aware of settlements if they were $250,000 or more.
Councilman Peter
Vallone, public safety chair, has pending legislation that would require the
Council to get a detailed breakdown of each NYPD tort claim pay out.
"We can
take a look and see if an individual cop or precinct has more than their fair
share of lawsuits," Vallone said.
Kelly told
reporters he opposed the bill since the suits often take years to resolve and
turnover at the precinct level is fairly steady, officers involved in the claim
are likely to have moved on by the time the suit was settled.
The NYPD and
corporate council did not respond to request for comment