Last month, the Legal Aid Society, the country’s oldest public defense organization, found that the city paid out more than $53.5 million for NYPD misconduct claims in the first half of this year. The total payouts since 2018, when the city started disclosing the data, now approach $1 billion in taxpayer money.
Amanda Jack, the director of policy for the Legal Society’s Criminal Law Reform Unit, says investing in public services and resources will prevent these lawsuits and save taxpayer money later on. She specifically points to investing in behavioral healthcare and education, commending recent emphasis on the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program.
“It goes without saying at this point that we all know that the safest communities aren’t the most policed,” said Jack. “They’re the most well-resourced… There are countless investments that have been identified over and over. And then, the big promise that [Mayor Zohran Mamdani] made that we have yet to see come to fruition is to start to really build out a crisis response that doesn’t include the police.”
Since 2022, the city has paid out more than $100 million annually, with a staggering $206 million awarded in 2024. The lawsuits themselves are often undisclosed due to settlement agreements, but more sizable payouts potentially stem from use-of-force injuries or false imprisonment. This most recent analysis shows the city is again on pace for another nine-figure year of payouts.
The legislation disclosing how much the city paid to resolve NYPD misconduct cases passed in 2017 and was enacted the following year under former mayor Bill de Blasio, who long championed police transparency while serving as public advocate. Data now comes out twice a year, with Legal Aid Society analysis usually not far behind.
While these numbers likely carry over from incidents and allegations that occurred under past mayors like de Blasio and Eric Adams, Jack called on Mamdani to deliver on several campaign promises regarding police reform, including abolishing the Criminal Group Database, which almost exclusively surveils young Black and Brown men as alleged gang members, and the Strategic Response Group, a unit often named in misconduct suits regarding protests and other First Amendment activity. Legal Aid also pointed to continued “quality of life” enforcement against lower-level offenses under NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who was retained from the previous Adams administration.
Jack, however, also credited Mamdani for appointing Jennifer Jones Austin as chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates NYPD officer misconduct and recommends discipline to the police commissioner. Previously, the watchdog agency went without a permanent head for more than half a decade.
Divad Durant, a member of the police reform organization Justice Committee, called for pivoting away from criminalizing poor people and against upholding “broken windows policing,” a disproven policing strategy involving prevalent low-level enforcement. He believes these practices lead to unnecessary NYPD encounters that can mutate into a misconduct lawsuit.
“[The] Justice Committee has worked with families since the ’90s who have dealt with the issue of trying to hold police accountable because of police abuse and police harassment,” said Durant. “We need to see real discipline, and if we don’t, it fuels this cycle of impunity where New Yorkers pay the price, and we will continue to see those same numbers, if not higher, if there isn’t real discipline.”
He specifically mentions Lt. Jonathan Rivera, who remains in the NYPD despite Justice Committee efforts to remove him from the force after killing Washington Heights resident Allan Feliz in 2019. Mamdani himself called for the officer’s firing last year while serving as an assemblymember. Despite an internal NYPD ruling that Rivera, who was named in multiple lawsuits, violated NYPD rules with a fireable offense, Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whom Mamdani retained from the previous Adams administration, overrode any discipline against him.
This week, an independent monitor tasked with NYPD oversight after the landmark Floyd v. City of New York lawsuit — which found the department liable for racially profiling Black and Brown New Yorkers — found that stop-and-frisks remain more than a decade later. Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the original case, expressed her disappointment in a statement over Legal Aid’s findings.
“Officers continue to racially profile individuals and engage in unconstitutional stop, question, and frisk, among many other constitutional violations,” said Sisay. “It is time for Mayor Mamdani to listen to the community members who elected him and ensure that NYPD officers and supervisors are disciplined and, if warranted, fired for engaging in racist and unconstitutional policing practices.”
The NYPD did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
