It Costs a Lot of Money to Treat Its Citizens as Poorly as New York City Does

Scott Shackford, a writer over at Reason Magazine takes a critical look at the burgeoning cost to taxpayers due to mistakes by New York’s finest.

New York City’s dominion over its residents comes with quite the legal price tag this year — $735 million, to be exact. That’s the cost the city will pay to settle claims and lawsuits against it for various sins, from police abuse to negligence to malpractice. The number is a record and also six times what Los Angeles pays on a per capita basis. Henry Goldman at Bloomberg News has crunched the city’s legal budget numbers:

The cost of legal claims is forecast to rise to $815 million by 2016, more than the city pays to run the Parks and Recreation Department, according to budget documents. Among the incidents triggering payments are malpractice in public hospitals, police beatings, improper arrests, collisions with fire trucks and potholes causing accidents.

The increase in litigation payouts may put pressure on Mayor Michael Bloomberg as he weighs job and service cuts to close a $3.5 billion deficit in a $72 billion budget next year. The gap widened by $1 billion last month when a court struck down a plan to sell 2,000 new taxi medallions.

Continue reading » … http://reason.com/blog/2012/09/04/it-costs-a-lot-of-money-to-treat-its-cit