576 cops split $17M
BY AUSTIN FENNER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005
Nearly 600 minority cops will soon get a piece of the $17 million settlement of a federal
class action suit charging
they suffered racial discrimination at the hands of their NYPD bosses.
Officers - 576 of them
- will get awards ranging from $3,500 to $400,000
from the suit, which the city settled just over a year ago. The victims
charged that the Police Department created a hostile work environment
for Black and Latino cops, especially when it came to disciplinary matters.
"Cops have their own disciplinary
system. The penalty for black and Latino cops were disproportionately
higher," said Diane Paolicelli, an attorney with the firm that
represented many of the plaintiffs.
Paolicelli said some cops lost
pay, others were given bad assignments or even fired in the retaliatory
climate.
She said awards, which varied
based on the duration and scale of discrimination plaintiffs allegedly
endured, will be sent out over the next month.
The city admitted no wrongdoing
in the settlement.
"When this settlement
was reached in 2004, the city allocated up to $20 million as a measure
of its good faith and commitment to resolving old claims stemming from
1996," wrote Georgia Pestana, a spokeswoman for the city Law Department.
Ken Feinberg, who was appointed
special master by Judge Lewis Kaplan to determine who might be eligible
for a settlement, told the Daily News yesterday that his office sent
out letters last week announcing the distribution of the settlements
to those people who filed a claim.
Paolicelli said more than 1,200
cops filed claims, but just 576 were able to provide adequate evidence
of discrimination. The lawsuit covered alleged discrimination from
1996 to 2003, said officials.
In a related matter, lawyer
Norman Siegel filed a new civil suit in Manhattan Federal Court on behalf
of nine transit cops who were awarded $500,000 in the 2004 class action
settlement. Those plaintiffs charge the NYPD has continued with the
same racial discrimination in 2004 and 2005.
"The racial discrimination
and retaliation continues," Siegel said.
City officials said they are reviewing
the papers regarding the latest allegations