NYPD Use of Force Complaints Surged Under Mayor Adams—And You'll Never Guess Which Neighborhoods Had the Most

It cost the City of New York $113 million to settle lawsuits over NYPD cops' alleged misconduct in the last fiscal year alone. Complaints of police use of force to the Civilian Complaint Review Board surged 49 percent from 2022 to 2023. And these complaints and lawsuits are concentrated in precincts where residents are overwhelmingly Black and Latine. In fact, across the city, the higher the percentage of residents in a precinct who are Black or Latine, the more force complaints that precinct generates.

Those are some of the findings of a new report issued this morning by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander's office. In addition to calling on the NYPD to start paying attention to where its officers are most often accused of using excessive force, Lander is also proposing that the NYPD finally start paying its own legal settlements when it gets sued, a stark departure from the present moment, in which the department racks up hundreds of millions of dollars in legal settlements without any impact on its own budget.

"The comptroller's job is an accountability job, and we try to look at the places where City action causes harm," Lander told Hell Gate. "We thought it was important to look at excessive force complaints and the harm they caused, both to people individually, but also in the form of claims and lawsuits that the City winds up spending money on. Claims and payouts have increased significantly during the Adams administration, and that made it important to dig in on what's going on."