New York, New York

In May 2020, Zayer attended a protest in Brooklyn where she was shoved to the ground by NYPD Officer Vincent D’Andraia and subsequently hospitalized. She experienced a concussion and a seizure, among other serious injuries. A video of the incident went viral online, and Zayer filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York in December 2020. New York City agreed to pay $387,000 to settle the case in February 2022. In a rare move for police settlements in the United States, D’Andraia personally contributed $3,000. In addition, D’Andraia faces a criminal charge of misdemeanor assault as a result of the encounter.

Under the settlement agreement in this excessive force case, the New York City Police Department also agreed to stop the use of the high-frequency “deterrent” or “alert” tone on its long-range acoustic devices, which the department has used in the past primarily to communicate with large crowds.

A settlement agreement prohibiting the New York Police Department from removing detainees’ hijabs while in police custody was reached on November 5, 2020, nearly two years after a lawsuit was filed in 2018.

The lawsuit may also have implications for police policies in Yonkers. The 2018 lawsuit claimed that it was illegal for the NYPD to remove religious attire for mugshots. Monetary settlements for the plaintiffs have yet to be reached.

The Pagan-Alomar settlement represents only one of the multimillion-dollar settlements against the NYPD this year. In 2019, New York City spent more than $68 million in settlements in response to over 1,000 lawsuits.

The complaint, filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, alleged that former detective Fabio Nunez had placed Medina in a chokehold and tased him 13 times when responding to a noise complaint. At the time, choke holds had been banned by the police department. Since beginning as an officer, Nunez has been named in several lawsuits alleging excessive force and other forms of misconduct. After attempting to have the case dismissed, a district judge ruled that the city and NYPD officials could be held liable, leading the city to settle for $567,500.

In 2015, The Wall Street Journal released an analysis of settlement totals from instances of police misconduct among the ten largest local police departments in the nation. Many of the cases involved in the analysis involved alleged beatings, shootings, and wrongful imprisonment. The analysis determined that, between 2010 and 2014, New York City spent $601.3 million on police misconduct cases. In 2015, the city paid $5.9 million to the estate of Eric Garner, who died after being put in a police chokehold. Additionally, a report released by the New York City Comptroller’s Office disclosed that the city spent nearly $270 million to resolve police misconduct claims in fiscal years 2017 and 2018. A recent analysis of data published by the New York City Law Department, detailing information on civil actions alleging police misconduct, showed that in 2019 the city was responsible for over $68 million in payouts to resolve nearly 1,400 civil lawsuits filed against the department.