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After Bodycam Footage Undoes Its Narrative, NYPD Agrees To Pay $13 Million To Anti-Police Violence Protesters
from the public-once-again-asked-to-pay-for-the-NYPD's-sins dept
Cops really hate policing protests that target police. But that has been the reality since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin ripped the bandage off an unhealed wound by placing his knee on the neck of unarmed black man George Floyd, choking the life out of him during an act that played out like an anthropomorphized version of systemic racism.
Following this murder (and it was a murder, as a jury decided), protests against police violence erupted across the nation. Most protests did not generate anything more newsworthy than the inevitable fact that the governed were unhappy with the armed enforcers employed by their governments. Others were far more spectacular.
The NYPD responded as it almost always does when its authority is even mildly challenged. It fought back, proving the point of demonstrators while NYPD officers violated rights repeatedly. When rights are violated, lawsuits follow. And the NYPD is now (disgracefully) exiting a lawsuit brought by wrongfully arrested protesters by (1) not admitting it has done anything wrong, and (2) graciously allowing New York City taxpayers to cover the costs of its misdeeds. Elizabeth Nolan Brown has the latest on this litigation for Reason:
New York City has reached another record-setting settlement with people arrested in summer 2020 racial justice protests. The city has agreed to pay $13 million collectively to people arrested during 18 protests in Brooklyn and Manhattan—an agreement that amounts to nearly $10,000 per person arrested.
[…]
Neither the city nor the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has admitted to wrongdoing in conjunction with the settlement, which comes as part of a federal class action lawsuit (Sow, et al. v. City of New York, et al.).
That’s the way it works for the general public. The government refuses to admit it’s done anything wrong and it casually walks out of courtrooms, tossing the bill over its shoulder to be added to the public’s tab.
That’s been the standard m.o. for plenty of law enforcement agencies. But the highly paid NYPD has been worse than most, racking up as much as a $250 million/year in civil rights lawsuits settlements for years in a row. And that doesn’t even count the sunk costs of defending NYPD officers against these lawsuits until it becomes apparent they aren’t winnable. That’s millions more city residents are expected to pay on behalf of people who violate rights and the lawyers the city hires to argue directly against its constituents’ best interests.
There’s a good chance the NYPD might have walked away from these lawsuits too. But, thanks to data and recordings generated by officers’ body cameras, the NYPD could no longer credibly pretend officers didn’t routinely violate rights while policing anti-police violence protests. Wired worked with legal reps for plaintiffs to pinpoint and analyze body cam footage, generating plenty of evidence that undercut any assertions the NYPD did nothing wrong.
Lawyers secured the settlement with the aid of a little-known tool that helped them quickly categorize and analyze terabytes of video footage from police body cams, helicopter surveillance, and social media. “We had multiple weeks of protests. We had protests spanning the city of New York. We had thousands of arrests,” says David Rankin, a partner at the law firm Beldock, Levine & Hoffman who was part of the protesters’ legal team. “We had tens of thousands of hours of body cam footage, we had text messages, we had emails, we had just an absolute truckload of data to get through.”
The path through all this data was carved by Codec, a video categorization tool developed by the civil liberties-focused design agency SITU Research.
[…]
Among the videos we reviewed, an NYPD officer can be seen running down the sidewalk while pepper-spraying a person who’s standing against a building, entirely out of the officer’s way. In another video, an officer hits a protester with a car door while driving down the street. Another video shows a group of officers interlocking arms as one of them says, “Just like we fucking practiced.” The officers then charge a group of protesters before singling out a person on the sidewalk and beating them with batons. Taken together, the footage demonstrates widespread, systematic police misconduct during protests that spanned from May 28 to June 4, 2020, across multiple neighborhoods in New York City, according to the legal team.
The NYPD captured the actions that undercut its own assertions of (relative) innocence. But that own-goal isn’t going to result in any officers — or the NYPD itself — being held accountable for the violations caught on camera. All it has done is pushed the city to take money from the wallets of residents to paper over the weeks of rights violations the city will never willingly admit were rights violations.
The settlement agreement [PDF] includes the usual statements swearing that a massive payout does not equal an admission of wrongdoing. And the terms of the agreement force those whose rights were wronged to agree with this non-admission of guilt if they want to partake in the begrudging spending of their own money by the same government that wronged them. The city buys its way out of more serious trouble and apparently believes handing out $13 million in cash (that it has taken from others) means it won’t have to actually address the causes and behaviors that have put it in this position dozens of times a year and cost the people its supposed to be serving billions of dollars over the last decade.
Filed Under: bodycam, false arrests, free speech, nypd, protests, racial justice protest
Comments on “After Bodycam Footage Undoes Its Narrative, NYPD Agrees To Pay $13 Million To Anti-Police Violence Protesters”
No surprises here…unfortunately. The Founder’s of this country did a damn fine job. They were all upstanding, responsible gentlemen. The only mistake it appears they made was to assume that people who would accept positions of responsibility were just as upstanding and responsible. I suspect we’ve outgrown our Constitution, judging from the clowns we have in every aspect of government and their unwillingness to actually protect the governed (or even do any other part of their job). I vaguely recall some famous quote about power and corruption… Probably not relevant, though.
Re:
“I suspect we’ve outgrown our Constitution”
I suspect we need to enforce the existing laws before they are declared obsolete and new laws written only to be ignored also. Thing is .. many laws are enforced upon the general public whilst not enforced upon the rich elite ruling assholes of the day and this seems to be a huge part of the problems existing within society everywhere.
You wanna do something about this shit? Tossing away the existing and starting over is a really bad idea for many reasons, dont believe me – look to history.
Re: Re: Who watches the watchers?
The problem is that law enforcement is the problem. We can’t enforce the existing Consitution properly, because the people responsible for enforcing it are their own form of organized crime. How are you supposed to fix that without a complete systemic overhaul of the entire system?
Yes, it’ll be chaotic and dangerous. But the existing system is also chaotic and dangerous. No, we’ll never fully get rid of corruption. But right now, our law enforcement systems are rotten to the core.
Re: Re: Re:
Flawed logic never solved anything.
What makes you think replacing the existing whatever will provide the relief you seek? You freely admit that it will also be corrupted as it is human nature, but it will work somehow … right? This is the place upon the schedule where one finds the words “A Miracle Happens” and everyone lives happily ever after.
NYPD does the crime, the public pays the dime
NYPD has zero accountability. Neither the NYPD budget nor the salaries of NYPD officers will be touched. The public will pay the bill, and NYPD is free to violate rights again, with the public again footing the bill.
'The video says you robbed the bank.' 'Here's $1000' 'Screw the video though'
As I’ve noted time and time again, stupid criminals end up in cells, smart criminals end up in law enforcement.
It would certainly be nice if judges would grow some spines and stop letting goons with badges just buy their way out of accountability using other people’s money, escaping not just any punishment but even having to admit to wrongdoing in the face of video evidence to the contrary.
Stop fining departments and start fining individual officers, do that and you could reduce the fines to a fraction of the current amounts and yet make them exponentially more effective as cops would suddenly have a reason to care about a ruling against them in court unlike now where it doesn’t matter how much the fine is because they’re not paying it.
Re: Fines
Better still, fines against a department come out of their precious pension fund; *this* would push them to police their own (pun unintended) to protect their retirement $$.
Two and you're out...
If I was in charge of a local government, I’d have a policy of
“If you are the defendant in more than one lawsuit in your career win or lose, you’re out.”
A nice objective standard that blows past any subjective crap.
Re:
Problem is that you can’t control whether you’re involved in a lawsuit as a defendant. That’s entirely under the control of whoever’s filing suit. A nutcase could simply file multiple suits to force anyone they didn’t agree with out of government.
Better option: if you are the defendant in more than one lawsuit where either the court found for the plaintiff or the settlement involved paying the plaintiff, you’re out.
Time to change the rules
I think it’s long past time to change the rules about government agencies using tax money to settle lawsuits. It ought to be that the government is barred from using tax money to pay settlements where the settlement involves paying the plaintiff and the defendants do not admit fault. Where the defendants do admit fault, the government is completely barred from paying the settlement. If the defendants truly aren’t at fault, then either the settlement shouldn’t involve paying the plaintiff off with the taxpayer’s money or the government should go into court and prove the defendants aren’t at fault. If the defendants are at fault, then either they admit it and pay the bill or the government should have to convince it’s insurer to pay up. Or maybe stop hiring people who’ll require the government to keep paying out settlements on a regular basis.
Re: No insurance, no badge
An idea I’ve seen tossed around that seems to have some merit is insurance, where officers would be required to have insurance to cover lawsuits like this(or other job-related costs) and if they actually get into one then the costs of that goes up and they have to foot an ever increasing bill until it’s no longer possible because even with insurance they can’t afford it.
As an added benefit if it’s department specific then one officer getting sued raises everyone’s rates so departments would have a financial incentive to get rid of problematic officers quickly to avoid everyone having to pay for their actions in ever increasing amounts.
Police Unions... 🤔
I’m starting to think that some states—instead of ‘right to work’ laws, need to pass ‘right to serve and protect laws’ that will have a similarly anti-union effect, except on police unions.
It took the NYPD that long to realize “Hey, wait, it’s not like we’re actually footing the bill for any of this, and realistically who the fuck’s going to follow up on us whether we paid or not?”.
Remember, when cops were against bodycam footage, this is why. This is what they don’t want you to find out.
possible solution?
If the payouts for these settlements started coming out of the PD’s pension fund, I expect the “thin blue line” would shred to bits in short order (yes I know, their contracts insulate them, but items like this may give the cities/counties more leverage in future negotiations).
Settlements
I wonder what would happen if it were illegal to come to a settlement paying the plaintiff without admitting wrongdoing. Probably even more troll lawsuits I guess.
Re:
No, because the troll lawsuits depend on the fact that it’s cheaper to settle than to fight and win. Also on the ability to drop the lawsuit on the eve of trial if the defendant won’t settle. If they knew they couldn’t get a settlement and would have to go to trial, and given how weak a case they have any trial would end with them not just losing but having to pay the other side’s legal bills, then any payout would be far under the odds and it wouldn’t be profitable to even try.
unless another excuse can be found!
The lying cops should go to prison, where they belong.
They should refuse any agreement without an admission of wrongdoing.
Police violate citizens rights, the taxpayers pay.
You want this to stop. Make the Police Pay for their crimes. Not the Tax Payers.