CHINATOWN — Claims against officers from Chinatown's 5th Precinct are up, making it one of the most-sued precincts in the city, according to statistics from the comptroller’s office.
Lawsuits against officers in the 5th Precinct — which covers Chinatown, Little Italy, Nolita and parts of SoHo — went up 2.92 percent between 2013 and 2014, according to a report released by Comptroller Scott Stringer last week.
Citizens lodged 52 claims against the precinct in 2014, or 5.98 percent of the 870 crimes in the precinct that year, stats show. That was up from 30 in 2013, or 3 percent of their crimes.
By comparison, the precinct with the most complaints in the city was The Bronx's 44th Precinct, which got 394 claims in 2014, which was 17.09 percent of their crimes.
Claims against the NYPD usually involve police misconduct and civil rights violations as well as injury or damage from accidents that involve police vehicles.
Claim costs for the NYPD have been the highest of any city agency, despite a decline in the number of lawsuits filed against the city, according to the comptroller’s office.
The number of lawsuits filed against the NYPD rose 71 percent between the 2003 and 2013 fiscal years, but declined 12 percent — its first double-digit decline in claims — in the 2015 fiscal year, the report said.
