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Is Police Brutality Common in New York?


A report prepared by the City Comptroller in February 1992 stated that the number of police misconduct claims filed with the Comptroller's Office "had increased 53% over the five years from 1987 to 1991 (from just over 1,000 in 1987 to more than 1,500 in 1991)." Claims have risen since then to around 2,000 annually. The number of actual lawsuits filed in any given year is somewhat lower but still substantial. More than 3,000 State and Federal civil lawsuits were brought against the City of New York alleging police misconduct for the years 1992 through 1995. .
             The number of cases actually disposed of in any given year is much lower, as civil lawsuits usually take years to reach a settlement. Statistics provided by the City Comptroller's Office show that damages have been awarded to victims of police misconduct in between 200-400 cases annually since 1988, as a result of out-of-court settlements or judgments in civil actions. The money paid out by the city in damages to alleged victims of police misconduct has risen from around seven million in 1988 to more than twenty four million in 1994.
             Some city counsel and police officials have suggested that the increase in civil actions is due to an increasingly litigious society and opportunistic lawyers prepared to file lawsuits in frivolous cases. However, it appears that civil lawsuits may in fact under-represent the true level of police misconduct. Attorneys and civil rights groups repeatedly told Amnesty International that many cases of ill-treatment did not result in lawsuits; these included cases where there were no independent witnesses; or the alleged victim was convicted of an offence arising out of the incident and had little chance of prevailing against the testimony of police officers; or the injuries were not severe enough to justify the costs involved in pursuing litigation. Although most such cases go unrecorded this appeared to be borne out in some of the cases reviewed.


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