This Brief explores police misconduct, through the lens of a 5-year study of civil liability cases against the New York Police Department in Kings County (Brooklyn), New York. The confluence of police misconduct and civil liability is an issue of growing concern for many communities throughout the United States. One measure of the severity of these concerns is the increase in the number of lawsuits alleging police misconduct and the civil liability resulting from these lawsuits.

Using Brooklyn, New York as a case study, the author of this Brief uses lawsuits that resulted in a settlement...