Watching the Detectives....

While I am sure that the member's here are familiar with alleged atrocities and abuse by some of the folks in law enforcement, here's a very interesting Op/Ed from the NYTimes, which does appear to show both an opportunity to save the city money, but also an opportunity to attempt to rein in officers who are abusing their badges.

www.nytimes.com

ACCORDING to a report released yesterday by John C. Liu, the New York City comptroller, over the last five years the city has paid more than $500 million in settlements and judgments against the New York Police Department, often involving misconduct claims against individual officers — and that doesn’t include attorneys’ salaries and administrative costs.

The number of claims for offenses like false arrest and brutality has surged by 43 percent over the last five years; in 2010, 8,104 claims were filed and $136 million was paid out.

Given New York’s yawning budget gap, the city should do all it can to bring such costs under control. Fortunately, there are a few simple reforms that could save the city millions.

Of course settlement does not equal guilt, but one has to assume their are some merits in these suits to have the city fork over half a billion dollars in the past five years. In addition you can't rule out suits only to get the money that the city seems to have no problem settling some cases..

I am sure that the city could have used that money for much better things considering the economy, and I would think that trying to weed out the bad apples in the police force would go a very long way to repairing the tense relationship between citizens and law enforcement.

Of course I type this in a rural area, far from the streets of the Big Apple, so my view is through the screen, and not from living in the city..

Do any of you who live there think this can or will ever happen?