at a time of demand for greater police accountability we are learning police departments across the state are spending millions to resolve claims of misconduct and have agreed to pay out at least 87 million dollars since 2019 to settle cases against their officers this according to an investigation by NJ Advanced media the payments by nearly 500 police departments were often done in secrecy until now NJ Advanced media reporter Riley Yates joins me to discuss those costly lawsuits and how they represent a fraction of just how much legal settlements involving law enforcement are costing the state Riley 87 million dollars is a lot of money can you give us some examples of what claims were resolved with that money sure I mean one of the stories I featured was a woman from Colts Neck who was uh punched in the face by a police officer during a domestic dispute call and the officer was from Marlborough neighbor in town and she suffered a broken eye socket and she received five hundred thousand dollars I interviewed another man who was uh he claimed he was beaten up by Trenton police officers who were there in his home to uh who came to his home to serve a warrant for old parking tickets and fishing license violations and he received 85 000 in both cases the township admitted no wrongdoing but they paid those settlements it's just so when we think about the payout what is the average amount for a payout you talked about different amounts in those examples but what's the average amount well yeah so we looked we got 370 settlements from 147 police departments and the median payout there was seventy thousand dollars which is just for perspective that's about twenty thousand dollars more than the typical New Jersey resident Burns in a year and then Riley old footing the bill is it taxpayer years yeah ultimately either directly or indirectly it's taxpayers a lot of municipalities there uh they're part members of what are called Joint Insurance funds which is a bunch of municipalities that band together to cover those claims and so ultimately that's taxpayer money uh it's of course taxpayer money when you're self-insured which a lot of the cities are and then in some cases it's it's private insurance that covers it but the premiums of course are paid for by the government and the government is funded through taxpayer money you know Riley I think is is do the lawsuits lead to any changes are officers actually facing consequences for their actions or are these infractions just shoved under the rug well and critics certainly say that that is the problem is that these lawsuits are secretive and you don't you don't see uh house cleaning after them is it because there's no admission of wrongdoing uh often the officers just stay and in fact we looked at the uh pension records and sixty percent of the officers who are named in these lawsuits were still police officers about a quarter of them had retired but that also just speaks to how long these lawsuits strike out no um of course the unions say that's not the case they say that officers when they do something wrong are disciplined and that uh you know the process is working how it's supposed to and then Riley I'm interested to know where was the most expensive lawsuit settled and what was it for yeah that was in in Camden County and that one actually captured quite a bit of headlines it was a man who uh was who was paralyzed from the neck down after uh an alleged beating by uh uh Camden County Regional police officers and that that case was settled uh after a trial led to a hung jury and it was a 10 million dollar settlement um and uh the county denounced that settlement and said it was it was forced upon it by its insurance carrier which the attorney for the man who was injured said was a disturbing was disturbing considering that uh it she said it spoke to to a lack of accountability for the county wow Riley Yates thank you excellent reporting and we'll see where this you know All Leads well thank you for having me in your interest in the story [Music]