Five Borough Defense

by Cynthia H. Conti-Cook
Associate, Stoll, Glickman & Bellina, LLP

So recently there has been some potentially exciting developments in how the City of New York will hold the NYPD accountable for its civil rights violations. In early December, the City Council Committee on Government Operations will be holding a hearing about proposed legislation that will require the City Corporation Counsel to report quarterly to the City Council on the profiles of filed civil rights cases. Perhaps in anticipation of this hearing, on November 5 the NYPD announced in a Daily News article that it was forming a “review panel” for the purposes of recognizing lawsuits that have implications on practices and policies of the NYPD. The article also says that the panel’s review will include lawsuits for which the City settled for $250,000 or more. Interestingly, according to records FOIL’ed from the Comptroller last summer, in the past 4 years (2006-July 2009), there were only 6 claims against the NYPD that settled for $250,000 or more. If the NYPD limits itself to reviewing these 6 cases of shootings and sodomy(s) instead of the routine repeat police misconduct that makes up the majority of civil rights lawsuits, obviously not much will change.

This brings me to the hearing. The City Council, if it limits itself in the legislation to requiring data on the lawsuits filed and amount of dollars settled, will also not find out any real information about patterns of misconduct and, most importantly, of the precincts with the leadership and training problems that are responsible for a majority of the civil rights lawsuits. Moreover, the Comptroller already reports annually on the basic numbers of lawsuits filed and dollars settled. It’s not clear what more the Committee expects to learn with this legislation. Instead, the City Council must insist that the NYPD take responsibility for tracking precinct tort and civil rights liability.
Here’s the link to the proposed legislation and the witness list.

I certainly hope that all the effort the civil rights bar has put into getting significant lawsuit settlements and verdicts in order to shed light on routine repeat police misconduct (while less than $250,000) gets awarded and not pushed to the side. This is an issue of fiscal responsibility and the City of New York is paying millions for NYPD civil rights violations ($80 million in 2008, half a billion since 2002) and yet the taxpayers are getting nothing in return when the NYPD refuses to document patterns of misconduct at precincts and among a handful of individual cops (and when the City government refuses to force them to document and report).

Text of the proposed legislation:
Int. No. 1025
By Council Members Vallone Jr., Brewer, Fidler, Foster, Jackson, James, Liu, Mealy, Sanders Jr., Stewart, Weprin, White Jr. and Nelson

A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the City of New York, in relation to requiring the Corporation Counsel to submit quarterly reports to the City Council detailing the number and disposition of civil actions filed against the New York City Police Department.

Be it enacted by the Council as follows:
Section 1. Section 109 of Title 7 of the Administrative Code of the City of New York is amended and new paragraphs b and c are added to read as follows:
§ 7-109 Corporation counsel; when the corporation counsel may appear for officer, subordinate, or employee of an agency; reports of the corporation counsel to the city council on civil actions filed against the police department.
a. The corporation counsel, in his or her discretion may appear, or direct any of his or her assistants to appear, in any action or proceeding, whether criminal or civil, which may be brought against any officer, subordinate or employee in the service of the city, or of any of the counties contained therein, by reason of any acts done or omitted by such officer, subordinate or employee, while in the performance of his or her duty, whenever such appearance is requested by the head of the agency in which such officer, subordinate or employee is employed or whenever the interests of the city require the appearance of the corporation counsel. The head of the agency in which such officer, subordinate or employee is employed shall submit all pertinent papers and other documents to the corporation counsel.
b. Beginning on the thirty first day of January in the year following the enactment of the local law that added this subdivision, the corporation counsel shall commence the submission of a quarterly report to the council of all civil actions filed against the police department and officers, subordinates, or employees of the department during the preceding quarter in which the corporation counsel or any of his or her assistants appeared or agreed to represent one or more parties. Such report shall include, but not be limited to, the number of actions pending, the number of claims in each action, the amount of time each action has been pending, the nature of each claim, the resolution of each claim, whether the resolution was achieved through settlement or trial, and the amount of any settlement. Actions pending resolution shall be noted in each report and their final resolutions noted in a subsequent report.
c. The report required by this section shall be submitted in accordance with the following schedule, except that if the due date specified below falls on a saturday, sunday or federal or city holiday, the report shall be submitted on or before the next day that is a business day: For the first calendar quarter (January 1 through March 31), on or before April 30; For the second calendar quarter (April 1 through June 30), on or before July 30; For the third calendar quarter (July 1 through September 30), on or before October 30; and for the fourth calendar quarter (October 1 through December 31), on or before January 30.

§ 2. This local law shall take effect upon enactment.

LS 6851
MG