d disturbing allegations of the ill treatment of suspects, deaths in custody and unjustified shootings by officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in the past few years. Although reports of police brutality are not new, the number of people bringing claims for police misconduct against the City of New York has increased substantially in recent years, from 977 in 1987 to more than 2,000 in 1994. The amount paid out by the city each year in settlements or judgments awarded to plaintiffs in police abuse cases has also risen, from $13.5 million in 1992 to more than $24m in 1994 (Amnesty International 1). The alleged brutality occurred across a wide area of New York City and involved victims from a variety of social, racial and ethnic backgrounds. However, the most serious complaints tended to be concentrated in high crime precincts and in precincts with large minority populations. More than two-thirds of the victims in the cases examined were African-American or Latino and most, though not all, of the officers involved were white. Nearly all of the victims in the cases of deaths in custody (including shootings) reviewed by Amnesty International were members of racial minorities (Amnesty International 5). According to press reports, the city paid about $70 million in settlement or jury awards in claims alleging improper police actions between 1994 and 1996. The New York City Law Department reports that police misconduct, described as assault/excessive force, assault and false arrest, shootings by police, and false arrests (as categorized by the city's Law Department), cost city taxpayers more than $44million for fiscal years 1994-95; this works out to an average of almost $2 million a month for police misconduct lawsuits alone. And it represents an increase over the three previous years, when the city reportedly paid a total of $48 million in these types of cases. In addition to an increase in amounts paid in recent years, th...
