The Legal Aid Society recently released a list of active New York City Police Department (NYPD) members that accumulated the most civil rights lawsuits over the past decade.
For the report, the nonprofit legal aid provider gathered and examined NYPD lawsuits (via City data) that took place between 2013 and July 28th of this year.
According to the analysis, the NYPD officer that has been involved in the most civil lawsuits during that time was Sergeant David Grieco, who has reportedly had 48 cases filed against him, resulting in a total payout sum of almost $1.1 million.
One of the cases involving Grieco, according to the Legal Aid Society, was an incident back in 2019, in which the sergeant and other NYPD members allegedly detained multiple New Yorkers without an arrest warrant, which later resulted in a lawsuit that would be settled for a $45,000 payout in 2021.
Other NYPD officials that collected the highest amount of lawsuits during the last 10 years included Detective Daniel Rivera (25 civil suits), Detective Abdiel Anderson (25), Detective Jodi Brown (24) and Detective Waliur Rahman (23).
The Legal Aid Society also compiled a list of the NYPD members involved in the highest total payout amounts during the same time period.
Officer Pedro Rodriguez topped the list with more than $12 million in payouts over three lawsuit cases. Other names to make the upper scale of the list included Sergeant Edwin Ching ($8.3 million over seven cases), Detective Ryan Bracconeri ($8.2 million over six cases) and Sergeant Jeffrey Griffin ($8.2 over five cases).
The pair of lists come after a report released by the Legal Aid Society earlier this month, which revealed that the City had paid out over $50 million in police misconduct lawsuits between Jan. 1, 2023 to July 28, 2023.
According to the nonprofit, at the rate that it is going, payouts for this year could balloon to around $100 million, which would surpass the totals of 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
“Collectively, these active members of the NYPD have garnered hundreds of lawsuits, costing taxpayers millions of dollars in cases raising shocking allegations of misconduct, yet they are still allowed to wear a badge and carry a gun,” said Jennvine Wong, staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at The Legal Aid Society. “It is also deeply concerning that many have attained ranks of sergeant or above.”
The full lists of NYPD members with the most lawsuits and the highest total payout totals can be found online via the Legal Aid Society.
