New York City Police Department corruption and misconduct

Allegations of misconduct and corruption have occurred in the history of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) . Over 12,000 such cases have resulted in lawsuit settlements totalling over $400 million during a five-year period ending in 2014.

In 1962, the Bonanno crime family mobster Frank Lino was arrested for his alleged involvement in the shootings of two Brooklyn police detectives. The detectives, aged 28 and 56, were shot dead during a holdup of a tobacco store in Gravesend, Brooklyn, where Lino and two others netted $5,000. Lino was charged with the murders after supplying a getaway vehicle for one of the "stick-up men" so that he could then flee to Chicago. Lino was one of the five men charged after being taken to the 66th Precinct for an interrogation. During Lino's interrogation, he claimed that police officers drove staples into his hands and a broomstick up his rectum. He alleged that the abuse resulted in a broken leg and arm. Lino was later released with three years probation after he threatened to sue the city for police brutality. He also claimed that the uncontrollable blinking of his eyes was a direct result of the alleged beating.

On April 28, 1973, Officer Thomas Shea shot 10-year-old Clifford Glover while in South Jamaica, Queens, thinking Glover had a gun. On June 12, 1974, Shea was acquitted of wrongdoing by 11 white and one black jurors but was fired from the NYPD that year and afterwards was divorced and had moved out of state.

On June 14, 1975, Officer Thomas Ryan arrested Israel Rodriguez on burglary charges, beating him while in the car and at the 44th Precinct when they arrived there. In 1977, Ryan was convicted of criminally negligent homicide but in 1979 when he was about to be sentenced, escaped and lived at large until turning himself over to Queens' district attorney in 1981.

On November 25, 1976, Officer Robert Torsney shot Randolph Evans to death while responding to a call at Evans's home, a Brooklyn housing project. Torsney was found not guilty by insanity defense (automatism of Penfield epilepsy) in 1977 and was committed to Queens Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital until July, 1979 when state reviewers declared him no longer a threat to himself or society and released him, although he was still denied a disability pension.

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