Caught by their own bodycams NYPD agrees to pay $13 million for abusing anti-police protestors

[jlw]

Originally published at: Caught by their own bodycams NYPD agrees to pay $13 million for abusing anti-police protestors | Boing Boing

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[Scientist]

The cops don’t pay for this so they don’t care. This settlement is a quarter of a percent of the annual NYPD budget, so the people the cops work for don’t care either.

For these settlements to produce any changes, either the money has to come directly from the police pension fund or else two zeros need to be added to the cost

[dabeyc]

Maybe future settlements MUST come with a statement of admitted wrongdoing. They’ll still settle, but at least they would have to say out loud what everyone else already knows. They may not care about the money, but cops definitely do not want to have to admit when they act like criminals.

[BillB]

Is there a way to do this? Have settlements ever included a statement of admitted wrongdoing?

Payoffs and NDAs seem to be the pattern when suing those with deep pockets.

[Mister44]

They just shoved that kids faced into the back window of a Taxi, shattering the window and cutting the kids face, during that Twitch streamer give away that got out of hand.

[Mr.Mofo]

“Police” is becoming such a slur.

[euansmith]

Rather than defunding the police, just make them pay their own legal costs out of their budget.

[DukeTrout]

@Scientist

For these settlements to produce any changes, either the money has to come directly from the police pension fund or else two zeros need to be added to the cost

Better yet, violating someone’s constitutional rights needs to come with jail time.

If a regular person violently kidnapped someone off the street for disagreeing with them, they would go to prison for decades. But cops don’t even get written up for it.

[Lurk_No_More]

Budgets would just increase even more exorbitantly. Tie these settlements directly to pensions and their behavior would magically change overnight.

[Scientist]

I was just thinking about what could happen with these settlements, but of course your right: these are criminal acts and should be prosecuted accordingly

[kmoser]

@Scientist

For these settlements to produce any changes, either the money has to come directly from the police pension fund

You misspelled “paycheck”.

[DukeTrout]

The reason that people propose taking lawsuits out of their pension fund is that it hits all of the officers in the department. Punishing individual officers with mind-numbingly large settlements that they will never pay off is less of a deterrent than having all your violent, armed colleagues (who know where you live) be very, very pissed off at you.

[kmoser]

I’m well aware, thanks. Unfortunately $x million dollars taken out of the pension funds of y police officers only makes an appreciable difference for large values of $x and small values of y. And even then, it’s “only” their pension, which is basically free money they get after they retire; it does nothing to reduce their income while they are working.

My amended proposal would be to split the difference: garnish the wages of guilty officers, while also removing some significant amount from the pensions of others.

[smulder]

@dabeyc

Maybe future settlements MUST come with a statement of admitted wrongdoing. They’ll still settle, but at least they would have to say out loud what everyone else already knows.

… or plaintiffs could simply hold out for a finding of wrongdoing — by definition no one can force anybody to “settle”