New York Police Department detective David Terrell filed a $175 million notice of claim against New York City for too easily paying out money to criminals who complain about law enforcement misconduct, The New York Post reports.
“You can sue an officer and the city’s going to pay out, whether it’s true or not true,” Terrell told The Post.
“What I say to the mayor is: Stop these people from making these frivolous claims and back the officers when something is 100 percent not true.”
“I want my name cleared, first and foremost. And I want these people to pay for their lies,” he said.
According to Terrell, gang members and other criminals used “unethical private investigators and legal counsel to file frivolous civil-rights lawsuits” to go after him.
Terrell has more than 1,000 arrests under his belt since joining the NYPD 15 years ago and was named a field intelligence officer to target gang members in the Bronx in 2014. He was promoted to detective specialist two years ago.
Of the 36 Civilian Complaint Review Board complaints slapped on Terrell, only two were proven to be legitimate. Det. Terrell told The Post those two cases were for not sharing his badge number on the phone.
For the past 11 years, Terrell was named in 15 lawsuits filed in federal and state courts. Although two of the cases were thrown out, the city settled three of them for $614,500, $55,000 and $25,000. Ten are still pending.
Terrell says NYPD rank-and-file are on their own when it comes to these cases. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the NYPD doesn’t call the state Attorney General’s Office or the Department of Justice to give aid with civil or criminal prosecution, or pursue civil cases via the city Law Department, he says.