What $117 million tells you, and what it does not
In 2025 the City of New York paid $117,251,230.82 to resolve 1,044 NYPD misconduct lawsuits, according to the Legal Aid Society's analysis of City data. Those are public statistics about other people's cases, and the most tempting thing to do with them, dividing one number by the other, tells you almost nothing about yours.
Once a year a number makes the news: what New York City paid that year because of its police. For 2025 the number is about $117 million, a payout total published by the Legal Aid Society. People call us quoting it. Some think it means easy money. Some think it means the system works. It means neither.
We publish this data because you should see it. The full series lives on the by the numbers page, and named public cases are on the public settlements page. This post is about how to read it.
The table
Source for every figure below: the Legal Aid Society's analysis of New York City Law Department data, released March 2, 2026. Each amount is the total payout by the City of New York on NYPD misconduct lawsuits, by the year the lawsuit was disposed of.
| Year of disposition | Lawsuits | Total payout, City of New York |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 1,044 | $117,251,230.82 |
| 2024 | 980 | $206,472,256.53 |
| 2023 | 811 | $115,852,780.64 |
| 2022 | 973 | $135,404,617.10 |
| 2021 | 753 | $87,405,727.13 |
| 2020 | 929 | $62,103,991.67 |
| 2019 | 1,276 | $71,723,242.62 |
| 2019 to 2025 | 6,766 | $796,213,846.51 |
Payout statistics published by the Legal Aid Society, March 2, 2026. Public records of other people's cases. Not results of this firm and not a prediction of any outcome.
Two things jump out. The payout total moves a lot from year to year: 2024 was nearly double 2023, and 2025 came back down. And the number of lawsuits does not move with it. 2019 had the most lawsuits in the series and one of the smallest totals.
What the table includes, and what it leaves out
It counts lawsuits, by the year they ended. "Year of disposition" means the year the case was resolved, not the year of the arrest or the year the suit was filed. A 2025 payout is for something that happened earlier, sometimes much earlier. The table is a record of the past, not a reading of how the NYPD behaved last year.
It leaves out pre-litigation settlements. A state-law claim against the City starts with a notice of claim filed with the Comptroller, and the Comptroller settles some claims before any lawsuit exists. Those payouts are not in this table. The true total the City paid is higher.
It covers every kind of NYPD misconduct lawsuit together. False arrest, force, and everything else are in one column. The figures we publish do not split the total by claim or by injury.
It was revised. Earlier Legal Aid releases gave slightly different figures for some years, for example $205.6 million as the 2024 payout total. The March 2026 table supersedes them. If you see a different number in an old news story, that is why.
The trouble with the average
Here is the arithmetic everyone does. $117,251,230.82 in payouts divided by 1,044 lawsuits is about $112,300 per lawsuit. To be clear about what that is: it is our own division of two Legal Aid Society figures, not a figure Legal Aid published, and not a description of any actual case.
Now do the same division for 2019 and you get about $56,200. For 2024, about $210,700. Did the typical case become almost four times more valuable in five years and then lose half its value in one? No. A yearly total is a sum, and a sum is sensitive to its largest entries. The table does not show how the payouts were spread across the lawsuits, so the average cannot tell you whether a year was made of a few very large cases or many small ones.
An average across a thousand lawsuits describes none of them. It tells you the City pays. It does not tell you what the City would pay you.
The table does not publish a median, and neither do we, because we do not have one from a source we can cite. What we can say is what drives a particular case: how long you were held, the injury, how the criminal case ended, the video, the officers' records, and the defenses. Our post on what a false arrest case is worth goes through them, and the what a case is worth page explains why this site refuses to put a number on yours.
A different set of numbers: the CCRB in 2025
The Civilian Complaint Review Board received nearly 5,500 complaints in 2025, the third-highest count in ten years. It closed nearly 2,000 fully investigated complaints, and just over 960 closed complaints had at least one substantiated allegation. By type, the allegations were 33.54 percent force, 47.78 percent abuse of authority, 15.12 percent discourtesy and 3.56 percent offensive language. The NYPD's rate of concurring with the Board's discipline recommendations rose from 30 percent in 2024 to 84 percent in 2025 (CCRB end-of-year release, December 16, 2025; CCRB 2025 Annual Report).
The CCRB investigates and recommends discipline. It does not award damages. A substantiated complaint and a lawsuit are different tracks with different clocks, and the CCRB and lawsuits page explains how they fit together.
So what does $117 million tell you?
Three modest things.
First, these cases are real and the City resolves about a thousand of them a year by paying money. You are not imagining that this happens to people.
Second, a thousand lawsuits a year is routine work for the City's lawyers. Expect a defended, methodical process, not a quick check. The how a case works page lays out the stages.
Third, none of it matters if the dates are missed. A state-law claim against the City needs a notice of claim within 90 days (N.Y. Gen. Mun. Law § 50-e(1)(a)), and no statistic about other people's cases extends that by a day. If a charge from the same incident is still open, a person with a pending charge should talk to their defense lawyer before describing the arrest to anyone; the criminal case and civil case page explains why.
By the numbers
The full public data series on NYPD lawsuits and CCRB complaints, with sources.
The data →What can be recovered
The federal rules and the state rules in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania.
Recovery →Count your own days
The one number on this site that is about your case: how long you have.
Deadline tool →Common questions
Where do these payout figures come from?
From the Legal Aid Society, which analyzed New York City Law Department data and released the table on March 2, 2026. The figures are payouts by the City of New York on NYPD misconduct lawsuits, by year of disposition. Earlier Legal Aid releases reported slightly different totals for some years; the March 2026 table supersedes them. None of the figures are about this firm's cases.
Does the table include every dollar the City paid for police misconduct?
No. It counts lawsuits. It excludes claims that the Comptroller settled before any lawsuit was filed, so the real total paid by the City is higher than the table shows.
Can I use the average to estimate my case?
No. An average across a thousand lawsuits blends every kind of case, from brief detentions to the most serious injuries, and the table does not say how the payouts were distributed. What a case is worth depends on the injury, the evidence and the defenses. We explain the factors and do not estimate a number.
Tell us what happened.
One conversation with an attorney, in your language. We tell you which claims the facts support, which deadline runs first for the agency involved, what evidence to preserve this week, and whether a pending criminal case changes the timing. If it is not a case we can take, we say so and tell you where to go.
(718) 484-7510If a criminal charge is still open, talk to your defense lawyer before you describe the arrest to anyone, including us. English, Russian and Spanish in-house; an interpreter for any other language. Contingency fee, confirmed in writing before we begin.