{"id":151368,"date":"2026-03-03T18:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T18:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/151368\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T18:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T18:49:07","slug":"police-misconduct-cost-new-york-city-taxpayers-more-than-117m-in-2025-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/151368\/","title":{"rendered":"Police misconduct cost New York City taxpayers more than $117m in 2025 | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Misconduct by the New York police department<\/a> (NYPD) cost the city\u2019s taxpayers more than $117m in 2025, a study of lawsuits resolved last year has found.<\/p>\n

The figure, in an analysis by the Legal Aid Society reported by the Gothamist<\/a>, is the third highest yearly total since 2018. But it is lower than the 2024 settlement amount, which topped $200m<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The city of New York<\/a> began publishing the data in 2013, and former mayor Bill de Blasio amended<\/a> a law in 2017 that required disclosures of civil actions against the NYPD, and their cost to the public purse, to be collated every six months.<\/p>\n

Jennvine Wong, supervising attorney with Legal Aid\u2019s cop accountability unit, told the Gothamist that the high payouts reflected a \u201cculture of impunity\u201d within the police department.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cAll of these kinds of things cost the taxpayer money. The NYPD<\/a> has not done enough to prevent that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Police Benevolent Association (PBA), which represents more than 21,000 uniformed officers, pushed back on allegations of misconduct.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city routinely settles lawsuits in cases where police officers have done nothing wrong, rather than fighting them in court,\u201d the group\u2019s president, Patrick Hendry, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cPolice officers are often not informed of these settlements and have no opportunity to clear their name.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuits, he added, \u201care no reflection on how police officers are performing their duties\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a separate post on the association\u2019s website, the PBA linked to a New York Post article<\/a> claiming that attacks on NYPD officers increased 3% during the first two months of the administration of Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor.<\/p>\n

The Gothamist also quoted a spokesperson for NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch, who said many of the incidents that gave rise to lawsuits settled during 2025 took place more than 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

Tisch, the spokesperson said, has taken significant steps to increase accountability and update policies that could create a greater risk of litigation, including regular meetings to review compliance issues, like use of force and new restrictions on vehicle pursuits.<\/p>\n

The Legal Aid Society studied city data and found that more than 1,000 lawsuits were resolved last year, with 17 of them costing more than $1m each.<\/p>\n

The highest payouts, $13m and $11m respectively, went to two men, Eric Smokes and David Warren, after a Manhattan judge overturned their convictions<\/a> for the killing of a French tourist near Times Square in 1987 when they were teenagers. The pair spent decades in prison.<\/p>\n

More than one-third of the 2025 figure, about $42m, were settlements for reversed convictions.<\/p>\n

The Gothamist noted that the $117m represented only a portion of the amount the city spends each year on allegations of misconduct by the NYPD. The city comptroller\u2019s office settles many cases before formal lawsuits are filed, it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Misconduct by the New York police department (NYPD) cost the city\u2019s taxpayers more than $117m in 2025, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-151368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-ny","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-nyc-headlines","12":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}