Under the Bloomberg administration, the city was more cavalier than not when it came to civilian lawsuits against the NYPD. During his time in office, the number of claims against the department doubled to a record high of 9,570 filed in 2012, costing taxpayers more than $1 billion. The News has now done an analysis of the most current data on these types of lawsuits, and has found that 55 officers out of the roughly 34,000 uniformed employees in the department have been sued 10 or more times over the last decade. And that includes one detective who has been sued 28 times since 2006, costing the city nearly a million dollars in payouts alone.

The officer in question is Peter Valentin, 36, who joined the force in 2002. The city has paid out $884,000 to settle cases in which he has been named, which includes dozens of false arrests; in at least four of those incidents, parents were arrested in front of their kids, and then had all their charges dropped later. When asked about those 28 lawsuits, Valentin told the News, "I’m not aware of that...Once it goes to court, I don’t follow it."

Valentin isn't the only serial offender when it comes to drawing lawsuits: Detective Vincent Orsini, 44, has been sued 21 times, costing the city $1,087,502 in payouts; Sgt. Fritz Glemaud has also been sued 21 times, costing the city $420,002 in payouts; and Detective Warren Rohan has been sued 20 times, costing the city $241,960 in payouts.

Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, defended the officers, saying that while the "average citizen may find it unsettling, the more active an officer is the higher the likelihood of being involved in some type of litigation. It is neither indicative of wrongdoing nor stereotypical." He blamed the city for settling so easily, creating "an incentive for plaintiffs and their attorneys to file them in the first place knowing it could be an easy payday."

After the lawsuits reached a historic high in 2012, the Comptroller's office recommended [PDF] creating a "task force" of members of the NYPD, Law Department, CCRB, and Comptroller's office to control areas that are deemed "high-risk in terms of claim activity." That didn't come to pass til this past September, when former Police Chief Ray Kelly agreed to start a Civil Lawsuit Monitoring Program and a separate Risk Assessment Unit.

In addition, Comptroller Scott Stringer said he’s launching a program called ClaimStat, “a data-driven claims review that will identify patterns and practices across city agencies that lead to claims and work with agencies to find solutions that save taxpayers money.”