Det. Valentin -- NYC's Most Sued CopMeet Detective Peter Valentin. Det. Valentin makes approximately $125,000 per year, including overtime, for his role as a narcotics officer with the NYPD. In the last 8 years, this cop has been sued for violating the civil rights of the people 28 times, or about once every 3 months or so. The suits that have settled have already cost the city (read: the taxpayers) over $884,000, as exposed by the NY Daily News.

The fact that these suits were settled means that the city found them to be credible. New York doesn’t simply settle lawsuits to get rid of them if it thinks they can win, and as you may have noticed on my blog, goes through great lengths to convince the courts (often successfully) of some very creative defenses. Yet, despite the fact that the city has plenty of reason to believe that this cop routinely violates the citizens, Det. Valentin is still a member of the NYPD.

Although Det. Valentin holds the record for “most sued officer,” he is hardly alone. The top 12 most sued NYPD officers were involved in a total of 231 cases and have cost the taxpayers at least $7,709,071. All of them are still employed. And there’s another interesting anomaly: of the top 12, nine of them are narcotics officers. The “war on drugs” is, of course, responsible for the rise of the American police state moreso than any other factor, and brings us all of these “no-knock warrants” that leave 80 year old men shot in their beds, searches authorized by dogs rather than warrants, and “I smelled marijuana!” as the universal justification for police assholery.

Why is it that these men are allowed to continue to victimize the population? Possibly because despite costing the city $7.7M, in addition to their salary, narcotics officers bring the city significant revenue in the form of civil forfeitures. Perhaps the NYPD looks at these lawsuits, and the beatings and false arrests doled out to innocents caught up in the dragnet, as “the cost of doing business.” After all, despite the fact that these cops are sued personally, the city still picks up the tab, so there is zero reason for these officers to behave as long as they keep bringing in the dollars.