New York City's Law Department is establishing a new unit to defend tort actions against police in state court, mirroring an initiative it put into place to fight, instead of settle, similar cases filed in federal court.
With an increase in the number of state court actions alleging misconduct by police officers against civilians, particularly in the Bronx, Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo yesterday said the Law Department would be staffing a new unit to fight the excessive force, false arrest and malicious prosecution actions it views as weak on the merits.
Cardozo announced the unit's creation during a City Council budget hearing, where he unveiled a proposed $142 million Law Department budget for the 2014 fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2013. The proposed budget is $5.6 million less than the department's 2013 fiscal budget of $148.1 million.
The cost of funding the new unit will be $1.73 million in fiscal year 2013 and $3.46 million in 2014, according to the Law Department.
The agency employs 670 attorneys and 590 support staff. The state tort unit will be comprised of 45 staff, 29 of whom will be lawyers. One-third of the staff has already been hired, Cardozo said at the hearing.
Read Cardozo's written testimony.
The unit replicates a Law Department initiative in place since July 2011 that has taken a more assertive approach to federal civil rights actions arising from civilian-police encounters that the city once would have opted to settle for low dollar amounts to avoid the high cost of litigation.
That stance created a "cottage industry" developed where attorneys brought "marginal" cases in search of a quick settlement, Cardozo said.
In the program's first year, the federal unit, with 28 attorneys and six staff, tripled the number of cases it tried to verdict and won "a majority," according to Cardozo's written testimony.
"So far, it looks like this program is working," Cardozo said at the hearing.
Along those lines, he said the new unit would offer a "stronger presence" in similar state court actions.
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Michael
So, dopey Corp. Counsel, having been inundated with so many lawsuits against the NYPD, instead of perhaps asking Mayor McCheese and CommISH Kelly to review police procedures, versus the reality of how individual officers act in reality, HAD TO CREATE A WHOLE NEW UNIT in his office, to handle the huge caseload? Wowsers. When even the City Attorneys are refusing to re-evaluate police procedure, the mayor and top cop refuse to re-evaluate police procedure (even spend millions with RAND and other pseudo-think tanks/research entities to rubber stamp the Mayors/Commisioner's viewpoints) THEN THERE IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM IN NYC. Obviously, the elite/rich are handled with kid gloves by the NYPD, while WE THE WORKING CLASS and the poor, ARE TREATED AS BAD OR WORSE THAN ACTUAL CRIMINALS. At least during the Reign of Gooliani, his ESU and NYPD were smart enough to ONLY STOP AND FRISK SUSPECTS....not every dark skinned person they see (or us light skinned people who happen to live in mostly minority neighborhoods). The 'settle quick and make 'em sign confidentiality agreements approach' has bankrupted us, yet they still blame fat and poor people as to why the city is bleeding money. Start making the ACTUAL OFFICERS and perhaps even their union monkey heads, pay into the settlement, and I bet you start seeing extremely COURTEOUS OFFICERS, instead of the bullies with a badge. How sad that Bloomturd's peeon would rather waste millions fighting brutality and other criminal acts by police, INSTEAD OF TACKLING THE PROBLEM HEAD ON WITH BETTER TRAINING.
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Avon
PLEASE FIX THAT CHART!
Before this article goes into the archives, or even into print, you need to change the captions of the chart colors/lines.
No way you can show "settlements in millions" by a number between 2,000 and 4,600 ... the City hasn't paid out $5 billion a year in settlements. The phrase "settlements in millions" should label the two-digit dollar numbers instead of the thousand-count data!
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