NYPD’s lack of lawsuit disclosure shields it from accountability

I love public records. They provide transparency as to government action. Light is one of the great sanitizers of corruption, they say, because when there’s a lack of transparency, there can be no accountability. And recently, we learned that the New York City Police Department hasn’t been as transparent about their legal troubles over the past 10 years, and it seems that the nation’s largest police department will not face any consequences for that lack of transparency. A years long investigation by city and state found that the NYPD failed to report that it had settled or paid out judgments in more than 12,000 lawsuits since 2013 12,748 lawsuits to be exact. That’s the number of suits the NYPD never reported that it was using New York taxpayer funds to defend and pay out despite being legally required to report that information. TRANSLATION The NYPD decided not to report what turned out to be 56% of lawsuits that it faced and paid from January 2013 to December 2023. So they kept mum about more than half of the times ever sued. How much more money do you think the NYPD paid? That’s $1.2 billion over the decade. This omission included high profile cases and small lawsuits. Now by omitting these litany of lawsuits from legally required reporting databases. Over the course of the last decade, the NYPD has been able to craft a narrative that made it look for less problematic in the eyes of plaintiffs and the public. The department leverage that narrative to its advantage. For example, in a budget hearing last May, the NYPD Deputy Commissioner of litigation, Michael Gerber said that lawsuit payouts were down with a 50% drop in claims asserting that this is a key measure in terms of police performance. Yeah, claims were down 50% Michael, because y’all weren’t reporting 56% of them. Come on. concealing the truth to this degree is indicative of nothing short of corruption. You can’t tell me that these omissions were not intentional. How do you forget to log more than half nearly 13,000 lawsuits filed against you? If you cannot do your job or do it without getting sued to the enth degree? How can we the people determine whether we should keep you in that job. It’s evident that the NYPD does not want new york city people to know about the mounting costs of police misconduct and that even with a $5.8 billion budget, the NYPD struggles are not just a few bad apples. But things are not getting better. New Yorkers deserve transparency just as much as they deserve public servants who protect and serve within the bounds of the law. There has to the consequences for the NYPD intentionally failing to disclose to the public, the more than $1.2 billion in settlements and monetary awards that it paid with city payers funds. Hearings must be held the head should roll from top to bottom budget should be cut to reflect the true cost the NYPD is only acts up to this point because they are not actually facing any consequences for their failure to report a 10 figure payout. If we want legal compliance from law enforcement there must be literal consequences attached. The transparency is just the first step to sanitize and corruption. Actual accountability must come next.