Throughout the history of the New York City Police Department, numerous instances of corruption, misconduct, and other allegations of such have occurred. Over 12,000 cases resulted in lawsuits settlements totaling over $400 million during the five years ending in 2014. In 2019, misconduct lawsuits cost the taxpayer $68,688,423, a 76 percent increase over the previous year, including about $10 million paid out to two exonerated individuals who had been falsely convicted and imprisoned.
Criminal justice advocates report that public access to information about NYPD misconduct is increasingly constrained, particularly due to the department's controversial 2016 reinterpretation of section 50-a of the New York Civil Rights Law. In June 2020, the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act was passed, which repealed 50-a and made the use of certain restraints by police anywhere in the state of New York punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
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History The Floyd v. New York decision in 2013 establishes a role for a court-appointed monitor to oversee the NYPD's efforts to reform (particularly regarding stop-and-frisk practices) and comply with the Constitution. As of 2026, the monitor is Mylan Denerstein.
In 2024, the city paid $206 million to settle cases involving police and prosecutorial misconduct across 953 cases with around 64% being wrongful convictions.
Misconduct involving one victim
1950s - 1990s
Arrest of Frank Lino
In 1962, Bonanno family soldier Frank Lino was arrested for his alleged involvement in the fatal shootings of two Brooklyn police detectives. The detectives, aged 28 and 56, were shot dead during a holdup of a tobacco store in Gravesend, Brooklyn by two armed men, who got away with $5,000. Lino was charged with the murders after providing one of the robbers with a car so he could flee to Chicago. After being charged, he was taken to the 66th Precinct for an interrogation. During Lino's interrogation, he claimed that police officers drove staples into his hands and a broomstick up his rectum. He alleged that the abuse resulted in a broken leg and arm. Lino was later released on three years probation after he threatened to sue the city for police brutality. He also claimed that the uncontrollable blinking of his eyes he suffered for the rest of his life, was a direct result of the alleged beating.
Shooting of Clifford Glover
On April 28, 1973, Officer Thomas Shea shot 10-year-old Clifford Glover while in South Jamaica, Queens, thinking Glover had a gun. On June 12, 1974, Shea was acquitted of wrongdoing by 11 white and one black jurors but was fired from the NYPD that year.
Beating death of Israel Rodriguez On June 13, 1975, Officer Thomas Ryan arrested Israel Rodriguez on attempted murder charges. Luis Santiago and three others had held Rodriguez and beat him on the roof of his building, forcing Rodriguez to hand over his stash of narcotics. After arriving at the scene in response to being called about a burglary, Officers Ryan and Brown arrested Santiago and three others who were armed and in possession of narcotics. Ryan asked Santiago where they had come from, and Santiago directed Ryan to Rodriguez's apartment. Ryan then took Santiago to Rodriguez's door and ordered him to knock on the door. When Rodriguez saw Santiago, he fired through the door, thinking that Santiago had returned to do him additional harm. Ryan entered Rodriguez's apartment, subdued him, and placed him under arrest. After confiscating narcotics from the apartments, Rodriguez and Santiago were both beaten before being transported to the 44th Precinct. Rodriguez subsequently died from injuries sustained during the beatings. In 1977, Ryan was convicted of criminally negligent homicide. In 1979, Ryan jumped bail on the day he was to begin serving his sentence and remained at large until 1981 when he turned himself over to the Queens' district attorney.
Shooting of Randolph Evans
On November 25, 1976, Officer Robert Torsney shot Randolph Evans to death while responding to a call at Evans's home, a Brooklyn housing project. Torsney was found not guilty by insanity defense (automatism of Penfield epilepsy) in 1977 and was committed to Queens Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital until July 1979 when state reviewers declared him no longer a threat to himself or society and released him, although he was still denied a disability pension.
Chokehold of Michael Stewart
On September 15, 1983, Michael Jerome Stewart was arrested for spray painting graffiti on a wall of Manhattan's First Avenue station. He was violent with the officers, ran to the street, lost consciousness, and died on September 28, 1983. In October 1983, the case went before a grand jury in Manhattan, but was dismissed seven months later when a juror was found to have violated court orders by conducting a private investigation into the charges. In February 1984, a second grand jury indicted three officers with criminally negligent homicide, assault, and perjury, while three other officers were only charged with perjury. Jury selection started in June 1985. On November 24, 1985, all six of the indicted officers were acquitted at trial. In 1987, the eleven involved officers and the MTA were sued for $40 million. In August 1990, Stewart's parents and siblings settled out of court for $1.7 million.
Shooting of Eleanor Bumpurs
On October 29, 1984, after threatening to throw boiling lye on Housing Authority personnel attempting to evict her, police forced their way into Eleanor Bumpurs's public housing apartment, where she lived alone. Her adult daughters wanted her to be hospitalized because she was schizophrenic with hallucinations. Although NYPD procedure required a City psychiatrist to be called in a case of involuntary hospitalization, none was summoned to the scene. Bumpurs was being evicted, supposedly for nonpayment of rent. Although NYPD procedure required a City marshal to be present and restricted the role of police to protecting the marshal and the marshal's assistants, no marshal was summoned to the scene. It later turned out that she had paid her rent as usual but had not been informed of a recent rent increase. When police broke down the door, the elderly woman was standing at the far end of a hallway with a kitchen knife in her raised hand. The police attempted to restrain her by pinning her against a wall with an extended Y-shaped pole, but she swept away the pole and charged the officers. When the lead officer tripped and fell to the floor, she stood over him and attempted to stab him with the knife. Officer Stephen Sullivan fired two shots from his 12-gauge shotgun, sending one pellet into Bumpurs' hand and nine other pellets into her chest, killing her. Sullivan was tried and acquitted in 1987. In 1990, the city ended the legal proceedings by agreeing to pay $200,000 to the Bumpurs family estate.
Stun gun coercion of Mark Davidson On April 17, 1985, Mark Davidson was arrested by undercover detectives on charges of drug dealing and taken to the NYPD's 106th precinct in Ozone Park, Queens, where he was beaten and tortured with a stun gun and threatened with torture on his genitals to make a false confession. On May 3, 1986, Sgt. Richard Pike, Jeffrey Gilbert, and Loren MacLary were each convicted of assault and were sentenced to four to six years.
Shooting of Edmund Perry
On June 12, 1985, Edmund and his brother, Jonah, were walking in Morningside Park where they encountered Lee Van Houten, an undercover plainclothes detective on car burglary patrol. Perry tried to rob Van Houten by grabbing his neck. Van Houten fell to the ground and fired three shots, at least one in Perry's stomach, killing him immediately. Two witnesses supported Van Houten's version of the incident, resulting in no charges being filed. Jonah Perry was found not guilty of mugging the officer in 1986. The NYPD settled a wrongful death suit related to Edmund Perry in 1989, paying money damages to the Perry family.
Shooting of Jose Garcia On July 3, 1992, Jose Garcia died from gunshots fired by undercover officer Michael O'Keefe after Garcia was chased into a building in Washington Heights. Police asserted that Garcia, a known street drug dealer, had been carrying a concealed weapon. But witnesses to the struggle and residents of Washington Heights said they believed the shooting death of Garcia was unwarranted, triggering demonstrations on the block where Garcia was killed. "Fires were set," according to a report of the demonstrations published by the New York Times, adding that "a car was overturned and debris rained down from buildings, leaving the block of the shooting, West 162d Street off St. Nicholas Avenue, littered with garbage, shattered bottles, vegetables, crates, slats of wood and even car parts." At the time of the demonstrations, police were unable to say "whether Mr. Garcia had pulled the gun on Officer O'Keefe or in some other way menaced the officer."
In the end six days of demonstrations took place, during which protesters "tossed trash cans, bottles and rocks, broke windows, looted and overturned and burned police cars," leading to "139 arrests, one death and 90 injuries, including those suffered by 74 police officers," according to a subsequent report by the New York Times. Fires were set in 14 buildings, and 121 vehicles were damaged. Two months after Mr. Garcia was shot and killed, a Manhattan grand jury voted not to file criminal charges against Officer O'Keefe after forensic evidence proved that both witnesses who claimed O'Keefe executed Garcia could not have seen the shooting from the position they asserted they were standing. In addition, the recording of Officer O'Keefe's radio transmissions for assistance corroborating his description of his life-and-death struggle with Garcia was released to the public. In an unusual move, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau published the grand jury report to ease public tension, but declined to criminally charge the two witnesses who touched off the riots with falsely reporting an incident and grand jury perjury by their false claims.
Officer O'Keefe was assigned to the NYPD's 34th Precinct, a station house that became the target, just one month before Garcia's shooting death, of a federal investigation over allegations of police corruption. Reported corruption at the 34th Precinct inspired Mayor David Dinkins to appoint the Mollen Commission to investigate police corruption.
Choking of Anthony Baez
On December 22, 1994, 29-year-old Nuyorican Anthony Baez was choked to death by police officer Francis X. Livoti in the University Heights section of the Bronx for accidentally hitting a police car with a ball. In 1998, Livoti was convicted of violating Baez's civil rights, and two other officers were convicted of lying on the witness stand at Livoti's trial. His widow later settled with the city for $3 million.
Sodomy of Abner Louima
On August 9, 1997, NYPD Officer Justin Volpe in Brooklyn sodomized Abner Louima with a broken broom handle in a 70th Precinct bathroom after lying about Abner attacking him and arresting him. Officer Volpe eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. Other officers were also implicated and convicted on charges stemming from the initial cover-up. Louima subsequently settled with the city for $8.75 million.
Shooting of Amadou Diallo
On February 4, 1999, four plainclothes NYPD officers: Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss, and Richard Murphy, who assigned to the Street Crime Unit in the Bronx fired 41 gunshots at Amadou Diallo, killing him instantly. Diallo, whom the officers mistook for a since-convicted rapist, was later found to be unarmed. The officers were subsequently acquitted in 2000, but the City of New York and the NYPD later paid out $3,000,000 to Diallo's parents in a civil suit. Following the controversy three years later, the street crime unit was disbanded.