this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
344 points (100.0% liked)

News

22985 readers
3852 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

New York Police Department (NYPD) misconduct lawsuits have cost the city more than $540 million the last six years, according to an analysis of government data released Thursday.

Since 2018, the lawsuits have totaled $548,047,141, including $114,586,723 for 2023 alone, according to The Legal Aid Society. The real total payouts for police misconduct is almost certainly higher, since the data does not include matters that were settled with the comptroller’s office before formal litigation, according to the organization.

With few exceptions, the number of disposed lawsuits each year has decreased but the median payout has continued to grow. In 2018, there were 1,579 settlements, for a median payout of $10,500. By 2023, there were 801 lawsuits settled, at a median payout of $25,000.

Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at The Legal Aid Society, said the total amount of funds from the payouts was “staggering” and said it reveals a system that fails to hold officers accountable.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TropicalDingdong 35 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This should all come from police pensions and retirement funds.

That will end police misconduct practically overnight.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They should need to carry malpractice insurance like doctors do. Let the insurance companies weed out the costly bullies.

[–] TropicalDingdong 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

If you take it out of the general pension/ retirement funds, you'll create a culture of self regulation, where the more senior, closer to retirement individuals, will absolutely not put up with some dumb ass rookie jeopardizing their money. You want to get change from people? Go after their money. I really only think you can solve police misconduct by changing the culture, so there has to be some kind of feedback mechanism that does this. This is the mechanism I've thought of. There has to be a kind of 'collective punishment' to change the culture.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Too difficult to implement. What other professionals need to collectively pay fines and judgements from their retirement savings? What's the precedent?

[–] TropicalDingdong 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Difficult to implement?

Easy as heck to implement. Union pensions are managed as a pool. When a union member commits a violation, it gets paid for out of the pool and the entire union suffers. The first time that a police officer violates civil rights, that officer will get crucified and it will never happen again.

In the current system, the community paying for the police foots the bill and there is no accountability. In the system I'm proposing the police are directly accountable for conduct, with more Sr. personal being more accountable (because they are more heavily vested in the pension).

This approach can even be used to promote furthering the development of unions. Its a win win win.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

They'd sue to stop it and you'd be forced to pay it all back.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You may underestimate the damage of a lawsuit. The first really great 'exemplar' lawsuit that comes through will absolutely bankrupt all retirees, good or bad, as that kind of fund is usually tightly managed and rarely enough. It'll be crushed.

If you want to sic it to the bad cops but not the ones that actually did as good a job as possible, collective punishment is no good here. In fact, it's still a war crime.

[–] TropicalDingdong 1 points 7 months ago

Well the union will have to carry insurance (obviously). And that premium will be a function of the departments performance.

if a department can't get insurance than it can't operate.

Its really not as difficult as you make it out to be, but yes, it should be painful for an entire department when there is misconduct.