National Police Misconduct Reporting Project

Tag Archives: civil lawsuits

ABC News: Six Police Misconduct Settlements Worth Millions

May 1, 2013 @ 3:38 PM by Tim Lynch

From ABCNews.com:

When police abuse their authority everyone loses. Victims may get hurt or even lose their life, police damage their credibility and taxpayers end up shouldering huge payouts to victims and their families.

Last week, the Los Angeles Police Department settled a lawsuit brought against it by two women officers mistakenly shot at during the Dorner manhunt in February. The settlement will cost the city $4.2 million and attorneys called it “a bargain.“

The article has a good summary of the six settlements, including this:

Police apprehended Woodman who was drinking beer near the Fenway area with a group of fans. Woodman collapsed, according to reports, and was taken to a hospital where he died 11 days later.

An investigator’s report concluded he died of a pre-existing heart condition. However, his family said they believed police lied about what happened during their son’s arrest. Woodman had more than a dozen abrasions, bruises, cuts or lacerations that were not mentioned in the investigator’s report.

Read the whole thing.

The “Lazy, not Lawless” Defense

April 30, 2013 @ 12:31 PM by Tim Lynch

From the New York Times:

The picture painted in court of the New York Police Department’s officers was not pretty.

Ten percent of them were malcontents who worked as little as possible. Unless they are being paid overtime, officers seem to avoid writing summonses. Indeed, some police officers need to be weaned of the idea that they are paid to drive around in their patrol cars, eating doughnuts.

And those sentiments came not from critics of the department, but from police commanders and city lawyers.

Damn the Evidence, Just Arrest that 11-Year Old!

April 25, 2013 @ 2:28 PM by Tim Lynch

From WKBN.com:

The parents of an 11-year-old Canfield girl cleared of false rape charges is suing the city, police department and investigators for $5 million, alleging investigators pursued the case because of political connections even after they learned the accusations were false.

The parents alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. Northern District Court in Youngstown that Canfield Police Chief Chuck Colucci pressured investigators and juvenile prosecutors to pursue the case against the girl despite investigators believing that her three accusers were lying to get her in trouble.

Colucci “in turn applied political pressure to Detective McGivern, demonstrating to McGivern that this prosecution was a personal priority of the chief’s that would affect McGivern’s career at the Canfield Police Department if he did not listen to” him.

The suit says police questioned the girl April 20, 2012 for about five hours without food, water or rest. …

The girl was arrested April 24, rape charges were filed against the girl and she was taken to the Juvenile Detention Center “without her parents even having a chance to say goodbye,” the suit alleges.

One of the accusers later told police they conspired to lie during the investigation, yet the case against the girl continued the suit says.

Judge Declines to Throw Out Excessive Force Lawsuit

March 22, 2013 @ 4:30 PM by Tim Lynch

From the Associated Press:

Although Fry testified he only remembered stunning Boucher three times, information downloaded from the device showed he used it six times in a 75-second span.

A third officer, Bradley Walker, testified that when he arrived at the scene, he saw McCormick hit a motionless Boucher with the baton about five times and saw Fry use his stun gun on him.

The officers handcuffed Boucher, patted him down and turned him over, only to find that he wasn’t breathing and his face was covered in blood. Boucher was dead minutes later despite attempts to revive him.

 

Police Misconduct Costs Chicago Residents Millions

March 15, 2013 @ 12:56 PM by Tim Lynch

From the Associated Press:

With three new settlements this week and more lawsuits pending, Chicago’s price tag for legal claims against its police force is climbing and has already surpassed the $27 million the city set aside for this year.

The City Council agreed to settle three lawsuits this week for nearly $7 million. That’s on top of the more than $32 million aldermen signed off on weeks ago in two police misconduct cases. With three more lawsuits stemming from one of the most shameful chapters in the department’s history — the torture of murder suspects by detectives under the command of former Lt. Jon Burge — still in the legal pipeline and two more federal lawsuits filed this week, the total could climb significantly higher. …

Aldermen said that while they believed the three settlements last week were fair, they’re angry that such cases continue to come before the council. They said they still hear that the officers involved either remain on the payroll or continue to receive their pension, including Burge.

“These guys are untouched and unscathed, and they keep their jobs by and large and they keep getting a paycheck,” said Alderman Howard Brookins Jr. “It has to stop.”

Note well that the victims that receive compensation are just a fraction of the victims out there.

Undercover Cops Ensnare a Special Ed Student, Get Him Expelled

March 12, 2013 @ 1:32 PM by Tim Lynch

From the Press-Enterprise:

The parents of an autistic student accused of selling marijuana last year to an undercover deputy have prevailed in their effort to have the teen reinstated at the Temecula high school.

An administrative law judge who heard the special education student’s case issued a scathing ruling against the Temecula Valley Unified School District Friday, March 8. Judge Marian H. Tully wrote the district left the student “to fend for himself, anxious and alone, against an undercover police officer” and said the parents had “overwhelmingly demonstrated” that the teen’s behavior with the deputy was significantly influenced by his disability.

An Office of Administrative Hearings judge who heard the case challenging a move to expel the special education student, Tully found that the district failed to provide the teen with required counseling and other services while knowingly exposing the teen to the deputy.

Dealing with pressure from the officer was a challenging social situation that “would have been difficult even for typical high school students,” the judge wrote.

7-year old Arrested, Handcuffed, Interrogated

January 31, 2013 @ 3:00 PM by Tim Lynch

From ABC News:

Wilson Reyes, a student at Public School 114 in the Bronx reportedly got into a fight with a fellow student in December after he was accused of taking $5 of lunch money that had fallen on the ground in front of him.  Responding to a complaint of assault and robbery, the police were called and took the boy to the local police precinct where officers allegedly handcuffed and interrogated him for ten hours, according to the lawsuit.

NYPD says the lawsuit is exaggerated.  The amount of money sought–$250 million–seems to be.

Illegal Detentions by New York Police

January 27, 2013 @ 1:14 PM by Tim Lynch

From the New York Times:

The judge excoriated the city for flagrant indifference to the Fourth Amendment. The amendment has been interpreted by the courts to mean that police officers can legally stop and detain a person only when they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is committing, has committed or is about to commit a crime.

The department’s patently illegal strategy, the judge said, encouraged officers to “stop and question first, develop reasonable suspicion later.” The ruling focuses on detentions that occurred as people were entering or leaving one of many residential buildings in the Bronx whose managers had simply asked the department to patrol the area and arrest trespassers. The Trespass Affidavit Program, or TAP, has thus not only led to unjustified detentions but has also placed untold numbers people at risk of detention merely for entering their own homes or visiting friends and relatives. Their experiences, as described in the ruling, makes perfectly clear why the largely minority citizens targeted and victimized by the program come away feeling angry and ill used.

Describing the typical, humiliating sequence of events, the judge wrote: “The police suddenly materialize, stop the person, demand identification, and question the person about where he or she is coming from and what he or she is doing.” She added that “attempts at explanation are met with hostility; especially if the person is a young black man, he is frisked, which often involves an invasive search of his pockets; in some cases the officers then detain the person in a police van,” where he or she is grilled about drugs or weapons. In some cases, the stop escalates into an arrest, the judge noted, with the person fingerprinted and held overnight. Even if the charges are quickly dropped, the arrest can follow the person for years.

Previous coverage here.