A Daily News review of
lawsuits against the NYPD show 55 officers in the 34,000-person department have
been sued 10 or more times over the past decade, costing taxpayers over $6
million. Here's a look at the four most sued officers — with Detective Peter Valentin
leading with 28 suits since 2006.
BY RYAN SIT , BARRY PADDOCK
, DAREH GREGORIAN AND JOHN MARZULLI / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
DETECTIVE PETER VALENTIN
Bronx North Narcotics
Sued 28 times, $884,004 in
payouts
Valentin, 36, joined the
NYPD July 1, 2002, and was slapped with his first lawsuit in 2006.
Promoted to detective in
May 2008, he’s been sued and charged with dozens of false arrests, including
four incidents where parents were busted in front of their kids — only to have
the charges against them later dropped.
Illuminada Valdivieso, 54,
says she was wrongfully arrested in front of her 10-year-old daughter when
Valentin and other officers raided her home, and then humiliated her by
repeatedly calling her J.Lo after she changed in front of cops.
“They were making fun of
her,” the daughter, now 13, told the Daily News.
DETECTIVE VINCENT ORSINI
Staten Island Narcotics
Sued 21 times, $1,087,502
in payouts
Orsini, 44, joined the NYPD
on April 30, 1995, and was promoted to detective second grade on Oct. 30, 2006.
He’s been sued numerous times for false arrest, including a 2009 incident when
he and his crew cut through the basement apartment of Darphil George and his
family en route to execute a search warrant on the first floor. The family of
immigrants, who’d never been in trouble before, says they were arrested without
cause.
“The officers said they
found cocaine in the apartment upstairs. These people didn’t live upstairs,”
said their lawyer, Brett Klein. Orsini denied any wrongdoing. The case settled
for $230,000. When asked about the suits, Orsini told The News, “I’m not gonna
go into it, but you can sue anybody.”
SGT. FRITZ GLEMAUD
Brooklyn North Narcotics
Sued 21 times, $420,002 in
payouts
Glemaud, 43, joined the
NYPD June 30, 1995, and has worked in undercover narcotics, vice and street
crime units for much of his career. He was promoted to sergeant in charge of a
detective squad in August, after being named in 21 lawsuits.
In one, he was accused of
leading a 2011 raid that ended with Francisco Rivera’s dog being shot. Charges
against Rivera, his wife and son were dismissed. In another case, Glemaud and
other officers allegedly jumped Lyndon Bissette on a Clinton Hill sidewalk,
claiming the man was holding drugs. The suit says Bissette fought back thinking
the plainclothes cops, who refused to identify themselves, were thugs. Once the
cops realized they had the wrong guy, the suit says they cuffed him for
resisting arrest. All charges were dropped, the suit says. Bissette, who got a
$35,000 settlement, said his injuries cost him his truck driving job .
Glemaud — who never
responded to requests for comment by The News — denied wrongdoing in both
cases.
DETECTIVE WARREN ROHAN
Brooklyn Narcotics
Sued 20 times, $241,960 in
payouts
Rohan, 43, who joined the
NYPD in 2000 and was promoted to detective in February of 2008, is named as a
defendant in two pending cases involving suspects who died in custody, and two
cases where parents temporarily lost custody of kids after they were wrongly
swept up in drug raids.
Loren Hall lost custody of
her 13-year-old child for two months as a result of a search warrant that led
to her July 2007 arrest, her lawsuit claims.
Court papers said the
endangering the welfare of a minor and marijuana possession charges were later
dismissed, and they received $60,000 from the city.
Rohan and his partner were
working plainclothes on June 25, 2011, when they jumped out of an unmarked car
and arrested Jose Luis Lopez on Bergen St. in Bed-Stuy on charges of possessing
a controlled substance which, according to the federal lawsuit, was medicine
lawfully prescribed to the plaintiff.
Lopez received a $24,000
settlement after spending two days in jail.
Rohan, who declined to
comment when approached by The News, was not accused of directly participating
in either of the deaths.
Detective is NYPD's most
sued cop, with 28 lawsuits filed against him since 2006 (SEE INTERACTIVE
GRAPHIC)
The number of claims
against the department doubled over the past decade to a record high of 9,570
filed in 2012. A Daily News review of lawsuits reveals that 55 officers in the
34,000-person department have been sued 10 or more times during that time
period. Read the suits and see the settlements of NYPD's 12 most sued with our
interactive graphic.
They're the NYPD's
most-sued cops, and Peter Valentin’s their king.
Valentin, a hard-charging
Bronx narcotics detective whose online handle is “PistolPete,” has been sued a
stunning 28 times since 2006 on allegations of running slash-and-burn raids
that left dozens of lives in ruins while resulting in few criminal convictions.
The city has paid out
$884,000 to settle cases naming the stocky, 36-year-old detective, but he
doesn’t seem too concerned.
“I’m not aware of that,” he
scoffed at a Daily News reporter when told of his claim to shame. “Once it goes
to court, I don’t follow it.”
The Bloomberg
administration routinely dismissed the relevance of civil suits against the
NYPD, even as the number of claims against the department doubled over the past
decade to a record high of 9,570 filed in 2012. The suits cost taxpayers more
than $1 billion dollars during that time period.
They “had a ‘see no evil,
hear no evil’ attitude,” said former city Controller John Liu, whose repeated
calls for analyzing lawsuits were ignored.
A months-long News review
of lawsuits against the NYPD over the past decade shows that 55 officers on the
34,000-person department have been sued 10 or more times during that time
period, costing taxpayers more than $6 million.
Many on the force are quick
to point out lawsuits do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing by an officer.
While the “average citizen
may find it unsettling, the more active an officer is the higher the likelihood
of being involved in some type of litigation. It is neither indicative of
wrongdoing nor stereotypical,” said Michael Palladino, president of the
Detectives Endowment Association.
He criticized the city for
being quick to settle these cases, saying the practice “creates an incentive
for plaintiffs and their attorneys to file them in the first place knowing it
could be an easy payday.”
While the Bloomberg
administration dismissed the relevance of civil suits against the NYPD, the
number of claims doubled over the past decade, hitting a record high in 2012. Here,
Bloomberg and then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in March 2013.
Most of the suits allege
false arrest, including scores of cases where people had criminal charges
against them thrown out, but still ended up with injuries, losing or almost
losing their jobs, pets, kids or homes.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and
there’s a lot of fire here,” said lawyer Neil Wollerstein.
But change is coming.
NYPD spokesman Stephen
Davis said former top cop Raymond Kelly established a Civil Lawsuit Monitoring
Program and a separate Risk Assessment Unit in September — after a series of
Daily News investigations showed the NYPD was turning a blind eye to
potentially problem officers.
The monitoring program
looks at the number of lawsuits filed against an officer, the nature of the
lawsuits, and an officer’s specific role in the incident, so they “can
differentiate the guy with the battering ram at the door and the guy who’s up
the block,” Davis said.
The risk assessment unit
looks at patterns and trends in the lawsuits that could warrant further review.
Davis said both programs
are in their early stages, and that Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is “taking
a hard look” at ways to improve them.
Meanwhile, City Controller
Scott Stringer said he’s launching a program called ClaimStat, “a data-driven
claims review that will identify patterns and practices across city agencies
that lead to claims and work with agencies to find solutions that save
taxpayers money.”
“We must find innovative
ways to reduce claims citywide and my office is laser-focused on making that a
reality,” Stringer said.
The lawsuits reviewed by
The News revealed a raft of troubling allegations.
During one early morning
raid in May 2011 at an apartment building in the Longwood section of the Bronx,
14 people in five apartments were hauled off to jail, one pooch was wounded by
gunfire, and another dog shot dead, records show. Valentin was the arresting
officer and signed many of the field tests for the narcotics allegedly obtained
during the controlled buys and raid.
Lawyers for the residents
called the raids suspect, noting that the warrants were based on 10 controlled
buys all from the same confidential informant — who in one day allegedly bought
crack and PCP from four separate apartments.
The only criminal charge
from the raid that stuck was a guilty plea for possession of a small amount of
marijuana.
But the scorched earth
approach to sweeping up tenants cost the city $202,500 in settlements.
One nursing mother spent a
week on Rikers Island because Valentin claimed white powder seized from her
apartment — which she had explained was from crushed egg shells used in a
Santeria ritual — had field tested positive as cocaine. “You can touch it and
see it’s not crack cocaine,” said the mom, Jemilah el-Shabazz.
She was released after an
NYPD lab test came back negative.
“That was the worst week of
my life,” said el-Shabazz, who got a $10,000 settlement for the ordeal. “They
had everybody under siege and they didn’t find anything.”
The Ramos family, whose dog
was shot and “seriously injured” during the raid, got a $130,000 settlement
from the city.
Three of the Ramoses were
brought in on charges they had a scale and grinder with marijuana residue on
it, and an imitation pistol, which their attorney said was a gun-shaped
lighter. All charges were dropped after they spent a night in jail.
An elderly woman who
answered the door declined to speak to The News, saying, “They’re all traumatized.
They’re seeing a psychiatrist right now.”
The woman whose pit bull
was killed did not sue the city. She told The News she was on dialysis,
in-and-out of the hospital, and didn’t think she could produce the necessary
paperwork proving she was actively caring for the dog.
“The dog’s body was wrapped
in a shower curtain in a hallway,” said Rosa Ortiz. “It was terrible. We all
loved her. We had her since she was a tiny puppy.”
Valentin denied any
wrongdoing in court papers.
Palladino said narcotics
cops in particular are on the front lines every day — which also puts them in
the line of fire for lawsuits.
The vast majority of the
city’s most-sued officers are narcotics cops, but they’re still a small
percentage of the more than 1,500 narcotics cops across the five boroughs.
The News’ investigation was
centered around the results of a Freedom of Information Law request for a list
of lawsuits filed against officers who have been sued 10 or more times over the
past decade. The city Law Department provided the names of 51 officers and 463
cases. A News search found an additional 146 cases against the officers, and
four other officers who should have been included in the response — calling
into question the city’s ability to track these cases.
A spokeswoman for the Law
Department acknowledged that its database “has not always identified all of the
defendants named in a lawsuit, especially if they were added after the initial
complaint was filed.” But, she added, the NYPD is notified about every officer
who’s sued, and “that information is entered into the officer’s personnel file
along with information about IAB and CCRB investigations.”
A source said the
information that’s entered into the files is far from complete — it only lists
the caption of the lawsuit and doesn’t detail what allegations were made
against the officer and what the result of the suit was.
Former Corporation Counsel
Michael Cardozo has called the settlements “business decisions” that don’t
reflect guilt, but Liu said there didn’t seem to be “any interest in looking at
the data to glean lessons.”
The News’ probe last year
showed two frequently sued officers — Lt. Daniel Sbarra and Sgt. Fritz Glemaud
— were promoted by Kelly despite a mountain of troubling allegations against
them.
Glemaud, who was promoted
to sergeant supervisor detective squad in August, is the city’s second
most-sued officer. His 21 suits tie him with Staten Island Narcotics Detective
Vincent Orsini, who’s been accused of making several bad arrests. He shares
Valentin’s disinterest in the lawsuits.
“I’m not gonna go into it,
but you can sue anybody,” Orsini told The News.
The most recent suit naming
Valentin is from November — and accuses him of roughing up a former All-City
basketball star in retaliation for an earlier lawsuit.
“I’m going to f--- you up,”
Tyrone Shields, 23, quoted Valentin as saying during the chilling July 2013
encounter, where Valentin allegedly referred to himself as “the King of the
Bronx.”
Shields had filed a notice
of claim — the first step in a lawsuit — against Valentin a few months earlier,
accusing him and other Bronx narcotics detectives of busting down his door to
search for drugs.
The officers had a warrant,
but it was for a different apartment, court papers say.
The Bronx district
attorney’s office refused to prosecute Shields and his other friends, who were
also swept up in the July arrest, finding there was “no probable cause” for
cuffing them in the first place. That suit is pending, and the Law Department
declined comment on the case.
Joanna Schwartz, a
professor at UCLA Law School, said that while allegations contained in lawsuits
are an “imperfect” source of information, they can often reveal problem
officers and defects in police training.
She said when an officer is
sued 10 or more times, it signals a “problem” that deserves a closer look.
“Research shows that only 1
to 2 percent of people who feel they’ve been mistreated by police file suit,”
she said.
Mayor de Blasio called for
more scrutiny of police suits during his campaign, and an inspector general for
the NYPD is expected to be named in the coming weeks.
Bratton, meanwhile, has
experience in using data from civil rights cases as an investigative tool.
While commissioner of the
LAPD between 2002 and 2009, Bratton instituted a program to monitor incoming
lawsuits that allowed the department to target problem crews for additional
training. The program was a success.
In 2001, the LAPD was sued
was 828 times, and the city paid out $58 million. In 2012, the department was
sued just 223 times, and paid out $20 million in settlements.
“The department was in a
better place when he left than when he arrived,” said UCLA professor Schwartz.
