NYC Pays $117M in Police Misconduct Settlements, Nearly $800M Since 2019

New York City shelled out more than $117 million in 2025 to resolve police misconduct lawsuits, bringing the seven-year total to nearly $800 million. The settlements covered cases ranging from wrongful convictions dating back to the 1980s to violent arrests during 2020 protests.

NEW YORK CITY — The nation’s largest city spent over $117 million during the past year resolving lawsuits related to police officer misconduct, with cases spanning from wrongful arrests of demonstrators in 2020 to flawed investigative work that resulted in innocent people being imprisoned in the 1980s, according to a fresh examination of municipal records released this week. The financial burden has reached almost $800 million across seven years.

Two men who served over two decades behind bars after being falsely arrested and found guilty of a deadly 1986 Manhattan robbery received the year’s biggest payouts, totaling $24.1 million combined. A separate $5.75 million settlement compensated a man who claims officers permanently damaged his left eye with a stun gun.

The Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit organization providing public defense services, published the examination on Monday while the city grapples with a $5.4 billion budget deficit. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has suggested reducing the NYPD’s $6.4 billion budget by $22 million alongside other spending cuts, even as officials highlight declining crime statistics. These misconduct settlements come from a different portion of the municipal budget, unlike other jurisdictions where such costs are deducted directly from police department operating funds.

“This examination focuses on bringing transparency to the true cost of the NYPD,” explained Jennvine Wong, supervising attorney for the organization’s Cop Accountability Project. “Based on our findings, it appears that substantial accountability measures have been missing within the police department. This represents a persistent issue requiring immediate attention.”

The city resolved 1,044 police misconduct cases in 2025, marking the highest number since 2019’s 1,276 settlements. This represented the fourth consecutive year with payouts surpassing $100 million. The previous year’s figure nearly doubled the $62.1 million paid in 2020 for 929 cases, while 2024 saw $206.4 million distributed across 980 lawsuits.

These figures represent only a portion of the city’s complete police misconduct expenses. The Legal Aid Society’s examination covers solely lawsuit settlements, excluding claims resolved by the city comptroller before formal legal proceedings began.

Among the previous year’s settlements, approximately $42 million addressed wrongful convictions while $28 million — roughly one-quarter of total payouts — involved incidents occurring over twenty years ago. Similar cases have comprised a significant portion of the $796 million the city has distributed for police misconduct lawsuit resolutions since 2019, according to NYPD officials.

“Although these cases require important attention, they provide no insight into current policing practices,” the department stated.

Under Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s leadership, the NYPD “has implemented substantial measures to enhance accountability, compliance, and modify outdated policies that could increase liability,” the statement continued. Officials noted the department collaborates closely with city district attorneys’ offices, supplying materials to support their examination of cases involving false arrest and conviction allegations.

Eric Smokes and David Warren, the men falsely convicted in the 1986 fatal robbery, received $13 million and $11.1 million respectively. Their 2024 federal lawsuit alleged that a dishonest detective relied on testimony from an emotionally impaired and drug-using 17-year-old attempting to escape his own robbery charges. Three of four witnesses who identified Smokes and Warren as perpetrators only did so after facing threats of criminal prosecution, according to court documents.

Steven Lopez received a $3.9 million settlement as the sixth individual arrested alongside the former Central Park Five, now called the Exonerated Five, after their convictions in a 1989 female jogger’s rape were reversed. While the Five proceeded to trial, Lopez accepted a plea deal for a reduced charge involving the mugging of a male jogger that same evening, succumbing to intense police and public pressure.

Additional settlements included $1.7 million for four demonstrators who claimed officers struck them with batons or forced them to the ground during a June 2020 Brooklyn protest following George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police.

The city distributed $5.2 million to nine individuals who alleged they were falsely accused in cases spanning 2014 to 2016 by two officers subsequently convicted of fabricating testimony and documentation.

Last week, a court-appointed oversight official criticized the NYPD for inadequate supervision and insufficient reporting of officers’ stop-and-frisk practices. A federal judge determined in 2013 that the NYPD’s widespread use of this search method for weapons and narcotics violated Black and Hispanic New Yorkers’ civil rights.

While the department has dramatically reduced stop-and-frisk encounters since then, it maintains “unacceptably low compliance rates” with constitutional safeguards, according to monitor Mylan L. Denerstein.

The NYPD’s enormous settlement expenses indicate additional efforts are needed to reduce misconduct, with “insufficient accountability continuing to foster a culture of impunity,” Wong stated.

“These judgments and settlement expenses are draining city resources while imposing not only financial burdens on police misconduct victims, but also inflicting genuine psychological harm that stays with them,” she concluded.