By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma
According to an article in the New York Post that was picked up in Newsweek, the City of New York has paid out $384 million in settlements for police abuse cases filed in the last five years. The recipient of the largest slice of that pie? Antonio Yarbough, our client since 2008 who was exonerated in 2014. Antonio and his co-defendant Sharrif Wilson were framed by NYPD officers for the 1992 slaughter of Antonio’s family by a killer who went on to kill again seven years later and has never been caught. Starting on the day Antonio found his mother, his sister, and a 12-year-old friend stabbed and strangled in Coney Island, he and Sharrif were wrongly imprisoned for nearly 22 years. They were released after DNA found under Antonio’s mother’s fingernails linked the murders to a similar slaying of a young woman in Sunset Park in 1999.
According to the articles, data released by the City’s Corporation Counsel shows that 37 cases were settled for $1 million or more, accounting for about half of the total payout. Most cases were much smaller. Of the more than 11,000 cases that were brought over the five-year time period, only about half settled at all. Three thousand of the cases settled for between $5,000 and $25,000, which is typical for a false arrest that does not lead to more than a night in jail.
Many of the largest settlements like Antonio’s come from a more violent time, when police were overwhelmed with murders and would do anything to close cases. Money can never make up for the wrongful loss of freedom, but these settlements help the victims of police misconduct heal. Hopefully, they also help deter policies and practices that lead to abuses by a small minority of police.