Misconduct by the New York police department (NYPD) cost the city’s taxpayers more than $117m in 2025, a study of lawsuits resolved last year has found.
The figure, in an analysis by the Legal Aid Society reported by the Gothamist, is the third highest yearly total since 2018. But it is lower than the 2024 settlement amount, which topped $200m.
The city of New York began publishing the data in 2013, and former mayor Bill de Blasio amended 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.
Jennvine Wong, supervising attorney with Legal Aid’s cop accountability unit, told the Gothamist that the high payouts reflected a “culture of impunity” within the police department.
She said: “All of these kinds of things cost the taxpayer money. The NYPD has not done enough to prevent that.”
The Police Benevolent Association (PBA), which represents more than 21,000 uniformed officers, pushed back on allegations of misconduct.
“The city routinely settles lawsuits in cases where police officers have done nothing wrong, rather than fighting them in court,” the group’s president, Patrick Hendry, said in a statement.
He continued: “Police officers are often not informed of these settlements and have no opportunity to clear their name.”
The lawsuits, he added, “are no reflection on how police officers are performing their duties”.
In a separate post on the association’s website, the PBA linked to a New York Post article claiming that attacks on NYPD officers increased 3% during the first two months of the administration of Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor.
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.
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.
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.
The highest payouts, $13m and $11m respectively, went to two men, Eric Smokes and David Warren, after a Manhattan judge overturned their convictions for the killing of a French tourist near Times Square in 1987 when they were teenagers. The pair spent decades in prison.
More than one-third of the 2025 figure, about $42m, were settlements for reversed convictions.
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’s office settles many cases before formal lawsuits are filed, it said.
