It cost taxpayers more than $117 million in 2025 to resolve lawsuits accusing NYPD officers of misconduct, the fourth straight year payouts surpassed $100 million, according to a new report.
The Legal Aid Society, which analyzed city data and released its findings Monday, said the ramifications of police misconduct will continue to be a problem because the NYPD too often fails to discipline officers and supervisors — especially if the allegations don’t make headlines.
”Something has to be done about this culture of impunity and there has to be some sort of meaningful accountability” said Jennvine Wong, a supervising lawyer with Legal Aid.
“Tthe NYPD’s federal monitor has pointed out the problem with supervisory accountability and in imposing discipline because it is about what happens with the supervisors within the commands and whether or not they’re holding officers accountable, whether they are identifying unlawful behavior.”
Mylan Denerstein, the federal monitor appointed in 2022 by a judge to monitor the NYPD’s progress in implementing court-ordered reforms, in a report released just last week noted that supervisors “repeatedly failed to identify unlawful stops, frisks, and searches.”
The payouts are for everything from unjustified street stops to wrongful arrests and convictions.
An NYPD spokesman said the most expensive of last year’s payouts were made to resolve cases involving wrongful convictions from many years ago that were only recently overturned — in large part because police and prosecutors now treat any attempt to clear one’s name “in a more serious and significant way than they were a decade ago.”
According to the analysis, 1,044 cases were resolved in 2025, most of them settled before trial, the payouts totaling $117,251,230.82. The analysis does not include cases that were settled after a notice of claim was filed but before an actual suit was filed.
Seventeen of the payouts topped $1 million, including $13 million for Eric Smokes and $11,130,000 for David Warren — childhood friends who in 2024 cleared their names years after they served lengthy sentences for a 1987 Times Square murder they did not commit.
Taron Parkinson, 25.
Others, like Taron Parkinson, sued after a Queens judge in 2021 set aside 60 convictions, including his, because of the actions of three corrupt cops.
Tarinson, who was 18 in 2014 when he was busted for a gun he said was planted on him, was paid $5,215,000 last year.
The NYPD spokesman noted that one of the cops involved in Tarison’s arrest, Officer Kevin Desormeau, was fired, while the other, Officer Sasha Cordoba, resigned before her administrative trial.
The spokesman said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has taken steps to cut down on misconduct allegations, including by strengthening the department’s vehicle pursuit policy, limiting chases to the most serious criminals.
And the department says that ComplianceStat, meetings in which commanders are grilled about key issues, such as incidents in which force is used, shows the department is determined to cut down on misconduct.
One such excessive force lawsuit cost taxpayers $2,564,250, the amount a federal jury in December awarded to Brigid Pierce. The case was officially closed out in February after the city decided not to appeal.
During a George Floyd protest in Downtown Brooklyn in 2020, Pierce, then 37, suffered brain damage when, as she was filming the event, she was slammed to the ground by an officer, with other officers then neglecting to get her medical aid.
The NYPD spokesman couldn’t say if any of the officers involved in the incident were disciplined.
Wong said while it’s “really hard to predict” if the emphasis on small-bore offenses, better known as broken windows policing, will continue under Mayor Mamdani, taxpayers should expect continued payouts linked to the low-level enforcement that increased during the Adams administration.
One way to reduce police misconduct, she said, would be, as the city comptroller recommended last year, to have settlement costs deducted from the NYPD’s operating budget, not the city’s general budget, as is now the case.
