NYPD Settles Case In Which It Arrested Guy For Recording Stop And Frisk, Pays $125,000
from the finishing-all-the-city's-business dept
In yet another case in which police illegal arrested someone for filming the police, the police have been forced to pay up. Unlike the big Simon Glik case, it appears that the NYPD (under new management!) decided to do its best to settle the case and get it off the books. They're paying $125,000 to Dick George, who recorded police doing one of its infamous stop-and-frisks. According to George's lawsuit, not only did the police arrest George and delete the photos from his camera (after he told the kids who were stopped and frisked to get the cops' badge numbers next time), the police flat out knew what they were doing was illegal -- telling George to sue the police:“Now we’re going to give you what you deserve for meddling in our business and when we finish with you, you can sue the city for $5 million and get rich, we don’t care,” Lt. Dennis Ferber said, according to the suit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.Not surprisingly, the new mayor and new police chief didn't want this case to go very far, and got George to agree to a $125,000 settlement. Will victories like this get police to stop these kinds of things? Doubtful, but it's still good to see.
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Filed Under: dick george, nypd, police, recording, settlement, simon glik
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Is so much as a penny of that settlement coming out of the pay of the officer in question? Will his pay be docked to pay for the settlement amount? His pension? Will the precinct he's from be paying any of that amount such that it will require budget cuts elsewhere as they suddenly find themselves $125K short? Will his union be paying out?
If 'no' to the above, then such settlements aren't going to do squat to get police to stop harassing people that record them, because why should they care, the public is the one footing the bill in the end.
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Re: NYPD responsibility
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Also, if the involved cops were actually punished for misconduct...
Utopia?
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However, his precinct should be on the hook for that amount. Doing things at this level would get the problem cleaned up in short order. Of course, it would also provide incentive for the entire precinct to cover up incidents like this.
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so you think that Every tax payer should pay for the idiots?
I still say that there is a concerted effort to bankrupt most cities and towns.
Other wise the only reason for these persons to be hired... Is because they like IDIOTS..
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As it is, it's just good fun for the cop to watch the taxpayers get punished for his abuse.
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Not Their Money
Of course they don't care, it's not their money. In fact, they're part of the force that will be used to take the money from others.
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Re: Not Their Money
I hate this "not their money" BS when it comes to the state having to pay out settlements.
If YOU citizens are tired of having your taxes pay for this stupidity get on off your damn duff and run against the assholes doing it, until then, STFU or support someone who will!
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In the end, we, the citizens, are responsible. That the settlements hurt the taxpayers isn't a bug, it's a feature.
To paraphrase an old quote, find the amount of oppression that people will tolerate and you've found the amount of oppression they will have.
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I've asked this before, and I still have yet to get a satisfactory answer, but why exactly do some people have a complete and utter aversion to public officials being held personally accountable for their actions? It's always 'it's the fault of the taxpayers for not knowing better/doing something, lets punish them', never 'lets punish the one who actually committed the crime'.
If someone assaulted another person, and was ordered to pay the medical fees and a punitive fine, they would be the ones on the hook for paying that money out, because they are the one responsible. And yet suddenly when a public official does something wrong/illegal all that responsibility is re-directed to the public, and they get off without having to pay a cent? How does that make sense?
In fact, I'll even give you this: I agree that the public shares some blame for the rotten system we've got.
When they re-elect people who have shown themselves to be corrupt or self-serving, at best it was because the other choice was worse, in which case the public's responsibility is decreased somewhat, because their hand was forced, but more often it's due to apathy and disillusionment, where people simply don't think they can do anything to fix the problem and so don't even try. In that case, the public gets what they give. They don't bother to try and fix the problem, so it remains broken.
Now, even given all of the above, why should a public official, whether political or police, not be made to pay, personally, for their actions? At most, the blame is shared, where the public is guilty of apathy or indifference to a corrupt system and don't care enough to fix it, but the official/officer is still responsible for what they've done.
In that case, split the payment, half using taxpayer dollars, and half paid directly by the responsible person/party. Insisting that the public pay all of it is ridiculous, as it means the one who actually committed the crime gets away without any punishment at all, and provides absolutely no incentive for them not to do the same wrong/illegal actions again in the future.
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I don't see anyone here who has such an aversion.
Public officials who act illegally absolutely should be held accountable for their actions. They should be prosecuted and if found guilty be punished.
These fines aren't that, though. The fines are to hold the police department itself accountable. Therefore, the department should feel that pain.
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If the fine is meant to punish the department, then split it, say 25/75 between officer and department, don't just dump all of it on the department.
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That should, in the very least, now be former Lt. Dennis Ferber, if the was any justice.
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It's almost a little sad that the case doesn't go further so we could actually know, but $150k of taxpayer money rather than several million is certainly not the worst decision they could make.
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If only there was some recording of the exchange...
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No, no it won't
It is taxpayer money being payed, it is not coming out of the offending cop's pockets. Now fire the cops and thing will change.
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Such naivete
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I'd have that judgment taped to the back window of my car... give the piggies a little reading material before they approach me.
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125k?
One thing to keep harping on is how much cheaper body and dash cams are than these settlements.
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Interestingly enough, police departments have been having an increasingly difficult time getting voters to approve their funding proposals.
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It's a no-win situation: we get blamed for our failure to rein in the police, or we get blamed for preventing them from fighting crime. (Similar to politicians being afraid restraining the NSA because of the risk of getting blamed for the next terrorist attack...)
As an example, I don't think the people of Ferguson had much choice about who was patrolling their streets. Lack of money, sway in the greater StL MSA's politics, and even basic hope left them with only one choice. Wait for a trigger event, and create something that the media simply couldn't ignore.
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It's the Corporation Counsel of NYC that handles the lawsuits.
This is an important distinction for all sorts of reasons that should be obvious.
If you're going to write about the law and judgements etc, whatever the issue, perhaps ya'll should understand the PROCESS.
The Corporation Counsel operates under the direction of the Mayor-- thus their freqeunt scumbag behavior under Giuliani and Bloomberg-- but NYPD...
Didn't "settle" anything!
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Wanna stop this?
So divert 50% of the officers' salaries towards paying this verdict. As soon as it costs the officers more than a light slap on the wrist when they pull stunts like this, it will stop immediately.
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