City Hall’s official tally of NYPD lawsuit settlements is woefully incomplete — and fails to account for $22 million in deals struck during the first three months of this year alone, The Post has learned.
From January through March, 286 suits filed against the NYPD over alleged police misconduct were settled for a combined $16 million in taxpayer money, according to data on the city Law Department’s website.
But thanks to a legal loophole, another 432 cases that were resolved in the same period aren’t included in the Law Department’s database, according to information obtained from the city Comptroller’s Office through the Freedom of Information Law.
Those settlements, which are the most recent available, exceed the amount that the Law Department said was paid out by nearly 40% — and pushed the actual total to $38 million.
Under a 2017 law signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Law Department is required to post “information regarding civil actions filed in state or federal court against the police department or individual police officers” twice a year.
But the Law Department’s latest data don’t include 426 cases that were paid out by Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office for a combined $16.9 million — because those cases were settled after complainants alerted the city of their intention to sue via a “notice of claim” but before a formal suit was filed.
The data also doesn’t include suits that are more than five years old — of which there were six that settled for a combined $5.1 million from January through March.
Stringer has been aggressively settling claims since 2014 in an effort to stem litigation against the city.
Last month, he struck a deal to pay $9.75 million to Mark Denny, who spent nearly 30 years in prison for a robbery and rape at a Burger King in Brooklyn before being exonerated in December 2017.
Lawmakers who supported the 2017 law were unaware of the hidden figures until being informed by The Post.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who was the bill’s chief sponsor as a Brooklyn councilman, accused officials of undermining its intent.
The NYPD “was resistant to this law in particular, and they have been resistant to full transparency around these questions in general, so I’m not surprised that they would try to get around the spirit of what we are trying to do,” Williams said.
A co-sponsor, Councilman Donovan Richards (D-Queens), chairman of the Public Safety Committee, was also outraged.
“We all know the spirit of this legislation was to get an accurate picture of the financial impact of officer misconduct,” he said.
“Whether a citizen settles out of court or pursues a full trial, there is absolutely a financial impact in both cases and ignoring part the puzzle prevents the public from getting the full picture.”
Another co-sponsor, Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), pledged to introduce a measure to close the loophole, saying it was “hindering our ability to identify possible hot spots for misconduct.”
A Law Department spokesman said the agency was following the “plain language” of the law and noted that it “does not even have copies of notices of claim in most cases until after the civil action is filed in court.”
Julie Ciccolini, a database administrator with the Legal Aid Society, slammed the limited scope of the city’s disclosure.
“[The city] shouldn’t be able to hide big police misconduct because either the case took too long or it was never filed as a lawsuit or may be filed under a different tort nature,” she said.
“I think that’s a problem with the wording in the law that can be changed.”
Stringer does not know how the Law Department crunches its data, a spokeswoman said.
De Blasio and the NYPD declined to comment.