Yonkers paid nearly $3 million
to litigants in police misconduct cases from 2000 to 2009, according to figures
provided to The Journal News following a Freedom of Information Law request.
That amounts to about $500 per
officer per year on legal matters related to misconduct cases, though police
officials have said that amount is low, and the figures appear to bear that
out.
The New York Police Department,
for example, averaged more than double that, or about $1,130 per year per
officer on misconduct cases during the same time, according to data obtained by
The Associated Press in 2010.
The NYPD comprises about 34,500
officers.
In Yonkers, police Commissioner
Charles Gardner said litigation had continued to decline since 2010.
"It should be noted that
citizen complaints against members of our department have steadily decreased
over the past three years," he said. "During the same time frame, we
have also experienced a corresponding decrease in certain police-related
litigation."
Attorney Randolph McLaughlin
said police hardly facilitated the complaint process, at least for his client,
Danny Squicciarini, who tried to file one in 2011 after an encounter with two
officers, including Alex Della Donna.
"They refused to let him
file a complaint. They said, 'Oh, we don't have any cops like that. We don't
know what you're talking about … Nah, get out of here,' " McLaughlin said.
Later, during a second
encounter with the same officers a few months later, the officers brought up
the attempted complaint, according to a suit filed by McLaughlin and his
partner, Debra S. Cohen.
"They said, 'We remember
you. You're the one who tried to file a complaint against us,' "
McLaughlin said.
Yonkers police paid $2,995,523
to settle 48 cases of police misconduct and brutality from 2000 through 2009,
and they paid an additional $2,077,990 to settle 52 other cases against the
department that did not involve misconduct, incidents like police cruiser
crashes or station accidents.
Those 100 cases the department
settled or lost in court are a little less than a fifth of the 515 cases filed
against the city in that time, meaning that 415 cases were dismissed or
otherwise won by the city in court.
The data provided to The Journal
News was a portion what the newspaper originally asked for in FOIL requests
submitted in July.
The city declined requests to
turn over personnel records for officers Alex Della Donna and William Pataky or
civilian complaints against the officers, or to say whether the two had ever
been disciplined because of a complaint.
The city also declined requests
to turn over how much each of the officers had cost Yonkers in settlements or
judgments.
The city did turn over dozens
of pages of minutes from the department's Professional Standards Review
Committee, a committee composed of police and residents that meets monthly and
analyzes civilian complaints.
But those minutes did not
include details of the complaints or say which officers were involved in the
complaints, only that a given complaint had been discussed and that action had
been taken. The minutes typically do not specify what type of action.