The LAPD\u2019s legal bills keep piling up.<\/p>\n
The city of Los Angeles has shelled out nearly $480 million over the last seven and a half years to end legal disputes involving the Police Department, including claims of excessive force, litigation over traffic accidents and cases filed by employees who allegedly faced retaliation after reporting misconduct.<\/p>\n
The soaring legal costs have come under greater scrutiny<\/a> in recent years as Los Angeles\u2019 financial problems have gotten worse. The city faced a $1-billion budget shortfall in 2025 but, after various cost-cutting measures, managed to set aside funding for the LAPD to hire more than 500 new officers<\/a> in the coming year.<\/p>\n The LAPD\u2019s annual lawsuit costs more than doubled from 2019 to 2025. The payouts peaked in 2024, when the city spent $178.6 million to resolve more than 300 police-related lawsuits and civil claims, before dropping to just over $100 million in 2025, according to a Times analysis of city attorney\u2019s data. <\/p>\n The Times reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents and analyzed data from the city attorney\u2019s office released through a public records request showing nearly 2,000 payouts dating to January 2019.<\/p>\n Through the first six months of this year, the city has paid out $20.3 million in legal settlements and court judgments involving LAPD officers. Several recent<\/a> big-dollar<\/a> verdicts<\/a> aren\u2019t included in that tally because they hadn\u2019t yet been approved by the City Council.<\/p>\n The surging cost of LAPD payouts is depriving the cash-strapped city of money for pressing needs such as fixing roads and sidewalks, City Controller Kenneth Mejia said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a reason why your streetlights are out and they\u2019re not fixed for a year. There\u2019s a reason why your sidewalk won\u2019t get fixed or your animal shelters are understaffed or underfunded,\u201d said Mejia, whose office is conducting an audit of the city\u2019s risk management strategies, the results of which will be released this year.<\/p>\n Experts are still untangling the reasons for the explosion of legal payouts involving police \u2014 which stretches far beyond L.A.<\/p>\n This year, a legal defense organization found that New York City has paid more than $796 million since 2019<\/a> to settle lawsuits involving accusations of police misconduct \u2014 including $117 million in 2025. In Chicago, the city is on track to blow past the $252 million<\/a> spent last year to resolve police lawsuits, mostly involving plaintiffs who went to prison based on faulty evidence, according to local news reports.<\/p>\n In Los Angeles, the surge has come under the watch of City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, who has blamed the rising costs on the way the office handled litigation of all kinds before her administration \u2014 as well as a national legal trend of so-called nuclear verdicts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe system is getting inflated in a way that is unhealthy and it creates, I think, incentives to sue and to do pie-in-the-sky settlements,\u201d Feldstein Soto said in an interview with The Times earlier this year. She said her office evaluates each claim case by case, deciding when it makes more sense to settle rather than go to trial, at which juries can issue decisions based on emotion or differing perceptions of what occurred. Feldstein Soto has lobbied for years to change state law to limit \u201cnon-economic\u201d damages.<\/p>\n Feldstein Soto\u2019s critics contend that she has pursued a hard-line approach in recent years, refusing to settle except in cases where it is clear the city is likely to lose in court. <\/p>\n That tough stance has led to mixed results. The city has lost some jury verdicts that could have been avoided if it had been willing to settle. It has also prevailed in several high-profile cases, including this year when a jury ruled that an officer was not liable<\/a> for the 2021 death of a 14-year-old girl killed<\/a> by a wayward bullet fired during a hasty confrontation with a suspect at a North Hollywood department store.<\/p>\n The city attorney\u2019s office said in a statement to The Times that while it is proactively working to curb rising litigation costs \u201cby every means possible,\u201d it could not \u201ccontrol the number, timing or claimed damages of lawsuits filed against the City.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNor does the Office have control over the alleged root causes of these liabilities: the City Attorney\u2019s Office is not responsible for LAPD policies or personnel,\u201d said the statement, adding that the number of lawsuits filed against the city has risen by roughly 20% in each of the last four budget years, straining the office\u2019s resources. <\/p>\n Zachary Powell, an associate professor of criminal justice at Cal State San Bernardino, said that although data suggest that use of force by police has decreased since 2020, the public has become \u201cmuch more aware of police abuses and conduct than they ever were before.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think people also ask a lot more questions in a jury setting,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Other explanations, he says, are the passage of statewide police accountability measures and the fact that a backlog of cases from the pandemic years is finally coming due. <\/p>\n The Times\u2019 analysis found that hundreds of legal battles involving officer-involved traffic incidents make up nearly a quarter of all payouts. Since 2019, the city has paid $125 million for the thousands of accident claims, just under a third of which stemmed from cases in which officers were found to have failed to stop or yield at crossings before crashing into another vehicle or a pedestrian. Pursuit-related claims and suits stemming from cases in which officers made improper left turns have also cost the city millions.<\/p>\n Other legal costs date back years \u2014 and in some cases decades.<\/p>\n The city is still paying $7,410 a month to Clarence Chance, who in the early 1990s was awarded a large payment over a wrongful arrest that led him to spend 17 years in prison for a murder he didn\u2019t commit<\/a>. Nearly $40 million has gone to people whose homes were damaged after the LAPD bomb squad<\/a> botched the detonation<\/a> of seized fireworks and leveled part of a city block in 2021.<\/p>\n One of the biggest payout categories was $104.6 million spent since 2019 on claims related to police shootings \u2014 more than three-fourths of which involved people who were reported to be under the influence of a substance or in the midst of a mental health crisis, according to The Times\u2019 analysis. Roughly $38.4 million was paid out after police shot someone wielding an edged weapon, such as a knife, the analysis found. Shootings involving gang officers cost the city nearly $4 million in that span.<\/p>\n Dozens of lawsuits remain pending, including claims related to the handling of mass pro-immigration protests since last year, probably putting taxpayers on the hook for more large payouts in the future. Police use of hard foam projectiles, horse-mounted officers and other tactics against crowds have already cost the city at least $22 million in the last seven and a half years \u2014 just over half of which stemmed from the department\u2019s response to the 2020 mass protests over the murder of George Floyd.<\/p>\n Such totals may not always include lawyer fees that are negotiated after a settlement is reached \u2014 or if a case is appealed.<\/p>\n Jonathan Evans, a civil rights attorney who has sued the department, thinks the big payouts show that greater public awareness of mental health issues is a factor. Recognizing this, he said, municipalities are agreeing to higher settlements than in years past.<\/p>\n \u201cThe decision to use lethal force is being more heavily scrutinized,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Tens of millions of city dollars have in recent years gone to disgruntled police officers who sued over workplace injustices such as sexual harassment, racial discrimination and retaliation. Since 2019, at least 27 LAPD employees have won million-dollar-plus jury verdicts or settlements from the city; many more have seen five- or six-figure paydays.<\/p>\n