NYPD Inspector General Says Police Should Track Lawsuit Data
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The New York Police Department should analyze the growing roster of lawsuits filed against officers to improve their performance and flag trends of misconduct, a watchdog agency said Tuesday.
Over 15,000 lawsuits have been filed against the NYPD in the last five years, with the annual total rising 44 percent in that time, the city's inspector general for police said. The suits have cost the department more than $200 million.
While lawsuit claims aren't necessarily legitimate, "when the data is properly gathered and analyzed, litigation data can still be used for positive, proactive improvements in policing,'' Inspector General Philip K. Eure's report said.
NYPD Inspector General Says Police Should Track Lawsuit Data
The NYPD uses a computerized system to track officer performance and police trends, and the department does cull some information from police litigation, such as the number of suits filed against an officer.
But the report says the NYPD doesn't have good access to information held by the Law Department or the comptroller's office.
"By having all of these entitites talk to each other more consistently, they're going to be able to come up with policies and procedures to ferret out the good information from the bad information," Eure told WCBS 880's Alex Silverman.
The NYPD said it was reviewing the report, while the head of the rank-and-file police union said lawsuits are too often baseless to make them a proper gauge of police performance.
"We don't see where there is any validity to using them in evaluating the actions of individual officers," said Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.
Some other police departments harness lawsuit data to address behavior that may otherwise go unidentified, Eure said.
Making better use of the data could help the city identify officers who need more training or monitoring, the report said.
In response to the rising lawsuits, the city has reassigned some oft-sued officers and is beefing up its legal staff devoted to handling such suits.
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