Police misconduct lawsuits have cost Philly taxpayers $60 million over the past 18 months

Federal lawsuits over police misconduct have cost Philadelphia taxpayers around $60 million since the beginning of last year, according to an Inquirer analysis of city figures and legal filings — the highest pace of spending on that issue in recent memory, and a rate that is unlikely to slow down anytime soon.

The payouts have ranged from a few thousand dollars for accusations of false arrests or excessive force by officers, to several million dollars for wrongful conviction cases. People involved in those suits have typically sued after being released from prison, blaming detectives or police officials for conducting shoddy or corrupt investigations that put them there.

The sharp uptick in spending recently has been primarily due to several wrongful conviction cases that were resolved around the same time. One man, Jimmy Dennis, was awarded a $16 million jury verdict in April, while three other men — Walter Ogrod, Willie Stokes, and Theophalis Wilson — agreed in 2023 to settle their unrelated cases for a combined $25 million.

Those big-ticket items have cost the city nearly as much as it previously spent on such suits in an entire year. In 2020 and 2022, annual spending on the issue didn’t top $7 million, the city said. And between 2013 and 2017, the city spent an average of $9 million annually to settle dozens of cases alleging police misconduct.

Still, the recent spending surge has also included categories beyond wrongful convictions. The city last year spent $9.25 million to settle suits related to the tear-gassing of protesters in 2020, and it has made several payments exceeding $500,000 to resolve lawsuits over recent police chases, shootings, or disputed arrests.

Perhaps the most striking thing for taxpayers, who ultimately foot the bill in these payouts, is this: The large expenditures are all but certain to continue.

In a financial document published earlier this year, the city said it knew of 15 pending police-related lawsuits that could cost another $8 million each to resolve — a total that would exceed $120 million if those projections are accurate. Many of those cases are connected to disgraced former homicide detective Philip Nordo, who was convicted in 2022 of sexually abusing witnesses and informants.

District Attorney Larry Krasner, whose office has been aggressive in seeking to overturn problematic convictions, said: “Unfortunately, certain prosecutors [and] certain police officers have cost innocent people big chunks of their lives and have cost taxpayers a lot of money. But if we are to return integrity to the system, we have to correct those wrongs.” (Krasner’s office does not handle settlement negotiations; that is the role of the city solicitor’s office.)

Ava Schwemler, a spokesperson for the solicitor’s office, said the overall number of police-related suits being filed each year has decreased — from 122 in 2020, to 81 last year. But the spending increase has been driven by wrongful conviction cases, she said.

“Minimizing the overall liability of the city and the cost to taxpayers … is a central goal of the city’s legal strategy,” Schwemler said.

John Hollway, executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, said the payouts are an indication that the city was seeking to rectify past wrongs. But he added that it was important for officials to learn from the suits and to reflect on how policies can be improved to ward off similar issues in the future.

“The tragedy would be thinking that by paying these lawsuits out, our job is done,” he said. “We have an obligation to learn from these things in a systematic way.”

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a police spokesperson, said the department has no say in which convictions get overturned or which subsequent lawsuits result in settlement payments.

But he said the department “is a learning organization, and we have consistently updated our policies and procedures over the years to reflect best practices in the field.” And he added that the way detectives and other officers operate now is significantly different than it was when many of the original convictions were secured, including by using video to record interrogations, and other technology — such as cell-phone records or DNA — to corroborate aspects of witness statements.

Walter Ogrod is one of the men who was paid in 2023.

After spending 28 years in prison for the killing of 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn in 1988, Ogrod was released in 2020 after prosecutors said they’d discovered new evidence undercutting his conviction. They also said they believed Ogrod — who served the majority of his time on death row — was likely innocent.

That declaration helped make Ogrod a free man. But he walked out of prison with virtually nothing, he said in a recent interview. He had to take out a loan to get by at first, he said, and the terms were onerous — in part because he had no recent credit or employment history.

He sued the city in 2021, and last year agreed to settle the case for $9.1 million. But more than a third of that money went to his attorneys, he said, a typical rate in such cases. And although he believed the city owed him a bigger payday, Ogrod said city lawyers, during negotiations, expressed a willingness to take his case to trial and then tie up any potential monetary judgment with a prolonged appeal.

They “told my lawyers they’ll take it to court and keep it going for years,” Ogrod said.

That’s what’s happening in Jimmy Dennis’ case.

Dennis spent 25 years in prison before a judge overturned his conviction in 2013. He later pleaded no contest to secure his release from prison, and after suing for police misconduct, a jury in April awarded him $16 million.

But in an unusual twist, city attorneys have since refused to commit to covering the portion of the penalty connected to two detectives at the heart of the case: Manuel Santiago and Frank Jastrzembski.

That’s a notable shift in how the city has historically approached police misconduct lawsuits. According to a 2017 report in the Villanova Law Review, Philadelphia has almost always indemnified police involved in civil lawsuits, meaning it has covered their costs. And it has indemnified Santiago and Jastrzembski in the past — in recent years, the city has paid out more than $30 million in settlements on misconduct cases they’ve been involved in, said civil rights attorney Paul Messing, who represents Dennis.

At a recent court hearing on the issue, U.S. District Court Judge Juan R. Sánchez asked the city about that seeming change-of-heart in Dennis’ case.

“You’re taking a position that is different than other cases in the past?” he asked.

Deputy City Solicitor Andrew Pomager said the city intended to appeal the verdict and didn’t want to take a position on indemnification while that process played out.

“I am responsible to the taxpayers of Philadelphia to not pay a convicted murderer $16 million unless we’re required to,” he said.

Messing said the city is trying to walk away from paying what Dennis is owed.

“I think this is gamesmanship,” he said.

Some exonerees say that even after getting paid, they have faced difficulties.

Ogrod said his financial windfall led scores of people to reach out and tell him ways he could or should spend his money. And others have said there are a variety of challenges adjusting to life outside of prison; Dennis has spoken publicly about his fear of being set up or falsely arrested and getting sent back to prison again.

(In one extreme example, Shaurn Thomas, who was released from prison before Krasner took office, settled his lawsuit for more than $4 million in 2020, but was charged with committing a new homicide last year.)

Krasner said his office has attempted to discuss an alternative to wrongful conviction lawsuits with the city solicitor’s office for several years — one that would present a choice to exonerees: Accept an early settlement or roll the dice and sue for a potentially larger payday.

The program would take inspiration from a similar initiative in Texas, Krasner said. It would make exonerees eligible for a payment from a city fund, Krasner said. The amount would be based primarily on how long the person spent behind bars, and it would likely be available only to people whose cases meet certain conditions. (In Texas, applicants must generally be able to show that they’re innocent and that a branch of the courts has agreed with that assessment.)

The benefit, the DA said, is that the exoneree would get paid quickly, and would avoid having to give 40% of the money to a lawyer. Attorney fees in the proposed system could be capped at a much smaller number, he said.

The exoneree would also forfeit the right to sue and seek a bigger payday — potentially saving the city money in the long run.

And exonerees who didn’t consider the awards sufficient could take their cases to court instead. The trade-off would be waiting years for the case to resolve, and then having to give a larger share of a potential payday to their attorneys.

“I’m hopeful that we’ll see some interest from Solicitor [Renee] Garcia, from Mayor [Cherelle] Parker, from members of City Council, who would like to do the right thing by innocent people who have lost decades of their lives in custody, while simultaneously doing the right thing by taxpayers,” Krasner said.

The odds of that program being launched are unclear. Schwemler, of the solicitor’s office, said discussions about an exoneree compensation program “have been occurring for many years.”

Krasner said he has spent more time discussing the idea with city officials than with the state legislature, where representatives could pass a law to implement the program statewide. Such an effort would require at least some support from Republicans in Harrisburg, who impeached Krasner in 2022 and have long been at odds with his office.

Ogrod, for one, said he believes exonerees deserve all the money and support officials can muster.

“I paid enough with my life already,” he said.