NYPD Lawsuits: Payouts, Claims, and Officer Discipline

New York City has paid roughly $796 million since 2019 to resolve NYPD misconduct lawsuits, covering 6,766 settled cases that range from decades-old wrongful convictions to excessive force during arrests and protests.¹ Payouts have topped $100 million for four consecutive years, and the true financial toll runs higher because these figures count only lawsuits, not claims the Comptroller’s office resolves before litigation.² If you are considering a claim, the deadlines are short and the legal path runs through both federal and state court.

What the Payouts Look Like Year to Year

The city paid $117.3 million across 1,044 settled lawsuits in 2025. The prior year was the worst on record in at least seven years: $206.5 million across 980 cases.³ The full recent trend:

2019: $71.7 million (1,276 lawsuits)
2020: $62.1 million (929 lawsuits)
2021: $87.4 million (753 lawsuits)
2022: $135.4 million (973 lawsuits)
2023: $115.9 million (811 lawsuits)
2024: $206.5 million (980 lawsuits)
2025: $117.3 million (1,044 lawsuits)

Between 2013 and 2023, NYPD civil litigation cost the city $2.157 billion. Since 1969, the running total exceeds $3.2 billion.⁴

What Claims Are Being Settled

Wrongful Convictions

Wrongful conviction cases are a small share of claims but a large share of dollars. They accounted for roughly $42 million of the $117 million paid in 2025. Nearly $28 million of that year’s total involved events from more than 20 years earlier.² In fiscal year 2023, 13 resolved wrongful-conviction matters cost $81.3 million — about 30% of NYPD tort payouts for the year, from less than 1% of resolved claims.⁵

The largest 2025 payout went to Eric Smokes ($13 million) and David Warren ($11.1 million), wrongfully convicted of a 1986 robbery. Smokes was 16 when arrested and served more than 20 years despite an alibi and no physical evidence. His conviction was vacated in January 2024 based on what the settlement described as fraudulent police practices.³ In an earlier high-profile case, Muhammad Aziz and the estate of Khalil Islam received $36 million combined ($26 million from the city, $10 million from the state) after their convictions for the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X were vacated in November 2021. A reinvestigation found that prosecutors had suppressed exculpatory evidence.⁶

Excessive Force

Use-of-force claims drive both large individual payouts and high case volume. The Comptroller’s fiscal 2023 report documented an $8.5 million settlement for a man pushed over a guard rail during a foot pursuit, who fell 15 feet and later died from spinal injuries. A separate $12 million payout went to a 17-year-old rendered quadriplegic after an encounter with officers.⁵ In 2025, one man received $5.75 million after being blinded in the left eye by a police stun gun.²

Force complaints have surged. The Comptroller’s September 2025 report found that complaints to the Civilian Complaint Review Board rose 49% between 2022 and 2023, reaching the highest level since 2013. In 2024, the CCRB received 7,080 allegations of excessive or unnecessary force.⁷

Fabricated Evidence and False Arrest

A $5.2 million settlement in 2025 resolved claims from nine people who said they were framed by former NYPD officers Kevin Desormeau and Sasha Cordoba between 2014 and 2016. Both were convicted of falsifying records and firing offenses, and both were dismissed.² The Queens District Attorney’s office vacated 60 convictions tied to Desormeau, Cordoba, and a third convicted officer, Oscar Sandino, because the officers’ criminal records “irreparably impaired their credibility.”⁸

Protest Policing

The 2020 George Floyd demonstrations generated their own wave of litigation. In December 2025, a federal jury awarded Brigid Pierce $2.56 million for brain damage sustained during a June 3, 2020 protest near the Barclays Center. The jury found that unnamed officers committed assault by grinding her head into the concrete. The city declined to appeal.⁹ A separate 2025 settlement paid $1.7 million to four protesters who alleged officers struck them with batons and threw them to the ground during a June 2020 demonstration in Brooklyn.² A 2020 Department of Investigation report had previously found that the NYPD “lacked a clearly defined strategy to handle George Floyd protests.”

How to Bring an NYPD Misconduct Lawsuit

A person who believes their rights were violated by NYPD officers can sue under both federal and state law. The most common federal vehicle is 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which allows suits against government officials who violate constitutional rights while acting under color of law. A plaintiff can also sue the city itself under Monell v. Department of Social Services when the misconduct stems from an official policy, custom, or failure to train and supervise.¹⁰

The deadlines are strict. Before filing a state-law claim, you must submit a Notice of Claim to the NYC Comptroller’s office within 90 days of the incident. The lawsuit itself must be filed within one year and 90 days. Federal Section 1983 claims carry a three-year statute of limitations. Filing a complaint with the CCRB is a separate administrative step and does not preserve or extend these legal deadlines.¹⁰ The NYC Law Department’s Special Federal Litigation Division defends the city and its officers in federal civil rights cases, and most matters are resolved through settlement negotiations before trial.¹¹

One local reform improved the odds for excessive force plaintiffs. In March 2021, the New York City Council eliminated the defense of qualified immunity for NYPD officers in cases involving unreasonable searches, seizures, and excessive force, making New York the first city in the country to do so.¹² In the three years before the law passed, the NYPD had invoked qualified immunity in at least 180 lawsuits, with the defense granted in roughly 100 of them.¹³ A state-level bill to end qualified immunity for all public officials (S182A) remains stalled in the Codes Committee as of early 2026.¹⁴

Who Actually Pays

Settlements come out of New York City’s General Fund, not the NYPD’s own budget. The Comptroller’s 2025 report identified this arrangement as a core obstacle to reform, arguing that it “shields the NYPD as a department, precincts, and individual officers from the financial consequences of misconduct.”⁷ Between 2015 and 2021, only 35 of roughly 36,000 uniformed NYPD officers personally contributed anything toward a settlement or judgment.¹³

The city also has no consistent way to use lawsuit data to flag officers who repeatedly generate liability. The NYPD’s Early Intervention System is designed to identify individual officers for non-disciplinary interventions but was not built to detect precinct-level or department-wide patterns. The department has no written policy for a department-wide analysis of all lawsuits and claims. In 2018, the Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD recommended such an analysis; in its 2025 annual report, the OIG marked those recommendations “Rejected.”⁷ A 2002 New York City Bar Association report had already found that settlement data was not recorded in officers’ personnel files, creating what then-Comptroller Alan Hevesi called a “total disconnect” between the resolution of civil claims and any department action.¹⁵

Individual officers illustrate what that gap looks like. Officer Pedro Rodriguez of the 72nd Precinct is named in eight known lawsuits with total settlements exceeding $14.7 million, the largest being a $12 million payout stemming from a 2018 foot chase in which his partner tackled a 17-year-old, breaking the teenager’s neck and causing paralysis.¹⁶¹⁷ Rodriguez has 37 recorded misconduct allegations, 15 substantiated, including physical force, unlawful entry, retaliatory summons, and interference with recording. He was found guilty in 2012 of wrongfully causing physical injury with a dangerous instrument and recommended for termination, but the judgment was suspended and he was placed on probation instead. He remains on active duty as of 2026.

Discipline and the Floyd Federal Monitor

Civilian complaints rarely translate into meaningful discipline. The NYCLU’s database tracks 43,144 active or former officers named in complaints between 2000 and 2025, involving 243,102 allegations. Of those, only 4,283 of 180,700 complaints led to any form of discipline, and just 1,530 — roughly 1% of all cases — resulted in suspension, probation, or termination. Two-thirds of officers with substantiated CCRB misconduct findings never received a penalty.¹⁸ The CCRB’s substantiation rate has climbed from 2.5% in 2008 to more than 20% in 2023, but final disciplinary authority rests with the NYPD commissioner. In one 2025 matter, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Trials recommended terminating Lt. Jonathan Rivera for excessive force related to a shooting; Commissioner Jessica Tisch reversed the finding and declared Rivera not guilty on all counts.⁷

The Floyd v. City of New York ruling in 2013 found the NYPD liable for a pattern of unconstitutional stop-and-frisk practices and racial profiling and led to the appointment of a federal monitor. More than twelve years later, the monitor remains in place because the department has not achieved substantial compliance.¹⁹ The monitor’s 28th report, filed in January 2026, found that self-initiated stops were lawful only 89% of the time compared with 97% for radio runs, that 29% of stops were not properly recorded, and that supervisors approved 99% of stops as lawful when auditors later found 11% of those same stops to be unconstitutional. The NYPD’s Neighborhood Safety Teams performed worse: their stops were lawful in only 75% of cases, and their frisks and searches were constitutional 58% and 54% of the time respectively.²⁰

Looking Up an Officer’s Record

How much you can learn about an officer before or during a case has shifted in recent years. In 2020, the New York State Legislature repealed Civil Rights Law § 50-a, which had shielded police disciplinary records from public access. In February 2025, the state’s highest court confirmed that the repeal applies retroactively and that there is no blanket privacy exemption for unsubstantiated complaints; agencies must evaluate each record individually.²¹

Access is still being contested. In April 2026, the Police Benevolent Association filed a federal lawsuit against the CCRB challenging its practice of releasing unsubstantiated complaints involving sexual misconduct, racial profiling, and false official statements in response to Freedom of Information Law requests. Complaints released through FOIL appear on the third-party database 50-a.org. The PBA is not seeking to reinstate § 50-a but wants the CCRB to redact identifying information for those three categories or use neutral descriptions.²² The New York Civil Liberties Union has opposed the union’s position.²³

Historical settlement data itself has gaps. A 2024 investigation found that the NYC Law Department had failed to report $1.2 billion in NYPD litigation settlements and awards over the prior decade — roughly 56% of the $2.157 billion total. The gaps included cases that took more than five years to resolve, cases filed before 2013, matters settled under nondisclosure agreements, and nearly 7,000 lawsuits settled within five years that simply went unreported. The Law Department said its reporting was “in compliance with the guidelines of the local law.” The City Council passed legislation in 2023 to close the reporting loophole, and it took effect in 2025.⁴

1
New York Times. Misconduct Lawsuit Settlements 2025
2
ABC7 New York. NYC Paid $117 Million in 2025 to Settle NYPD Misconduct Lawsuits
3
Queens Eagle. Police Misconduct Payouts Top $100 Million for Fourth Straight Year
4
City & State NY. How $1.2 Billion in NYPD Civil Litigation Case Settlements Went Unreported
5
Office of the NYC Comptroller. Annual Claims Report
6
CBS News. Muhammad Aziz Khalil Islam Lawsuit Settlement
7
Office of the NYC Comptroller. A Blueprint for Department-Wide Restraint
8
New York Daily News. Queens Judge Vacates 60 Convictions Obtained by Crooked Cops
9
New York Daily News. NYC Ordered to Pay $2.5M to George Floyd Protester in Excessive Force Lawsuit
10
New York Injuries. New York Police Misconduct Lawyer
11
NYC Law Department. Annual Report 2025
12
CNN. NYC Police Reform NYPD
13
Forbes. New York City Limits Qualified Immunity, Makes It Easier to Sue Cops Who Use Excessive Force
14
New York State Senate. S182A – End Qualified Immunity
15
New York City Bar Association. The Failure of Civil Damages Claims to Modify Police Practices and Recommendations for Change
16
50-a.org. Officer Pedro A. Rodriguez
17
Yahoo News. Report Reveals NYPD Most Sued
18
NYCLU. NYPD Misconduct Database
19
Center for Constitutional Rights. Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al.
20
amNY. Federal Monitor Year-End Report
21
New York State Committee on Open Government. COOG Alert
22
NYC PBA. NYCPBA v. CCRB
23
Amsterdam News. Can a Police Union Lawsuit Block Sharing of Stigmatizing Unconfirmed Complaints