The taxpayer bill
Immunity doesn’t make the cost of misconduct vanish. It transfers it. The officials who framed the innocent or buried the evidence pay nothing personally — the public pays, hundreds of millions at a time.
Because the individual actors are shielded — police by qualified immunity, prosecutors by absolute immunity — civil-rights lawyers can’t make them pay for the years they cost people. So they sue the city or county instead, under a federal statute called Section 1983, and taxpayers settle the bill. This page lays out the mechanism and the numbers, and is careful about what they do and don’t show.
What this page is about
When official misconduct violates someone’s constitutional rights, the way to seek compensation is a civil-rights lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. But the people responsible are shielded: police officers by qualified immunity, prosecutors by absolute immunity. So the lawsuit is brought against the municipality — and under Monell v. Department of Social Services (1978) a city is liable only where its own policy, custom, or failure to train caused the harm. The upshot is that when misconduct is paid for at all, the public treasury pays, not the wrongdoer.
The sums are enormous. Chicago spent nearly $259 million in a single year (2025) resolving police-misconduct lawsuits — about three-quarters of it wrongful-conviction cases. New York City paid $117 million in 2025 and more than $796 million since 2019. These municipal totals are primarily police misconduct; the wrongful-conviction share is where prosecutorial misconduct — fabricated or withheld evidence — bundles in. And in the hardest prosecutorial cases, even the city escapes, and the victim recovers nothing at all.
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Step through it here, or present it fullscreen.
The taxpayer bill.
Because the officials are immune, the public pays. When misconduct produces a wrongful conviction, the individuals can't be sued — so cities and counties settle, and taxpayers foot a bill that runs into the hundreds of millions.
Who pays, how much, and how the money moves
The mechanism: you can't sue the official, so you sue the city.
FACTCompensation for a constitutional violation runs through a civil-rights suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. But the individuals are shielded — police by qualified immunity, prosecutors by absolute immunity — so the suit targets the municipality. Under Monell v. Department of Social Services (1978), a city or county is liable only where its own policy, custom, or failure to train caused the harm. When that bar is met, the public treasury pays the settlement or judgment; the officer or prosecutor whose conduct caused it typically pays nothing out of pocket. The cost of misconduct is, by legal design, socialized.
Chicago: nearly $259 million in a single year — three-quarters of it wrongful convictions.
FACTUnder a federal consent decree, Chicago's Department of Law reports what the city spends on police-misconduct litigation. Its analysis found Chicago taxpayers spent nearly $259 million in 2025 resolving misconduct lawsuits — more than three times the 2024 total. Wrongful-conviction cases accounted for $193.4 million, roughly 75% of the bill; improper vehicle pursuits added $54.4 million. Wrongful convictions are exactly the category where fabricated or withheld evidence lives — the point at which police misconduct and prosecutorial misconduct meet, and the public pays for both.
New York City: $117 million in one year, $796 million and counting since 2019.
FACTThe Legal Aid Society's analysis of city data found New York City taxpayers paid $117.25 million in 2025 to resolve lawsuits alleging NYPD misconduct, and more than $796 million since 2019. Legal Aid stresses the real figure is higher, because the data excludes matters settled by the City Comptroller before formal litigation — so these are floors, not ceilings. The analysis landed as the city warned of a historic budget crisis: money paid out for misconduct is money not spent on everything else.
And sometimes no one pays at all: the double bind of absolute immunity.
FACTFor prosecutorial misconduct the shield cuts deeper. Absolute immunity blocks suing the prosecutor personally, and Connick v. Thompson (2011) held that a district attorney's office cannot be liable for a single Brady violation without a proven pattern. John Thompson — wrongly imprisoned 18 years, 14 on death row, after prosecutors buried a blood test that cleared him — won a $14 million jury verdict and then lost it 5–4 at the Supreme Court, recovering nothing. So the taxpayer bill, huge as it is, understates the harm: in the hardest prosecutorial cases, neither the official, nor the office, nor the treasury pays, and the entire loss stays with the victim.
$90 million to close 176 cases: the Ronald Watts squad (Chicago).
FACTIn September 2025 the Chicago City Council unanimously approved a first-of-its-kind $90 million 'global settlement' resolving 176 lawsuits — involving roughly 180 wrongfully convicted people — tied to disgraced police sergeant Ronald Watts and his crew, who spent more than a decade extorting residents of a Chicago public-housing complex and framing innocent people on planted drugs. The prosecutorial thread is the point: prosecutors won convictions on the squad's fabricated evidence for years, and the Cook County State's Attorney's office ultimately had to move to vacate more than 200 of those convictions. The city settled globally to cap an exposure it could no longer defend at trial — a single corrupt unit, $90 million of public money.
$41 million, about a million a year: the Central Park / Exonerated Five (NYC).
FACTIn 2014 New York City settled the civil-rights suit brought by the five Black and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted in the 1989 Central Park jogger case after police and prosecutors extracted false confessions from minors. A federal judge approved the $41 million settlement — roughly $1 million for each year each man spent incarcerated (Korey Wise, held longest, received $12.25 million; the other four $7.125 million each). It remains one of the emblematic wrongful-conviction payouts in the country, and the bill, as always, fell on the city's taxpayers rather than the officials involved.
Where a nine-figure judgment actually comes from
Payouts this large can’t come out of a routine annual budget, so local governments reach for a few specific mechanisms — each of which pushes the cost onto the public in a different way:
Judgment bonds (borrowing). Big cities frequently issue special municipal bonds to pay off large verdicts: the city borrows from investors to pay the plaintiff now, and taxpayers spend the next 10–20 years repaying that debt with interest. Chicago has repeatedly borrowed to cover its settlement costs — so the true price to residents exceeds the settlement figure itself.
Siphoning the general fund. When a city doesn’t borrow, the money is pulled straight from its general fund — a direct trade-off: a dollar paid to settle a misconduct suit is a dollar not spent on roads, schools, libraries, or parks.
The insurance funnel (small towns). While the biggest cities self-insure, smaller towns and counties carry municipal liability insurance. A single wildly corrupt judge, prosecutor, or police unit can send premiums soaring or get the town dropped by its insurer entirely — either way, the shortfall lands on local property taxes.
The public pays for the system’s wrongs; the wrongdoers are shielded
This is the public-cost mirror of Policing the Poor: there, the poor are billed in fines and fees to fund the system; here, the public is billed for the system’s wrongs while the officials who caused them are protected by absolute and qualified immunity. It completes the Judges & Prosecutors hub: misconduct is common, discipline is rare, immunity blocks the lawsuit against the person — and the cost is socialized onto taxpayers, or worse, left entirely on the victim. It also severs the feedback loop accountability depends on: when the wrongdoer never feels the cost, the price signal that might change behavior never reaches them.
Questions worth taking seriously
Aren't these police-misconduct numbers, not prosecutor numbers?
Mostly police — and we say so plainly. The reason they belong here is the wrongful-conviction share (about three-quarters of Chicago’s 2025 bill), which is where fabricated or withheld evidence lives: the same cases typically involve both police and prosecutorial conduct. We don’t break out a prosecutor-only municipal total, because the public data doesn’t cleanly separate it — and we flag that as a gap rather than inventing a number.
If the city pays, isn't that accountability?
It’s compensation, not accountability. A settlement makes the victim (partly) whole, but it comes from taxpayers, not the wrongdoer — who keeps their job, pension, and immunity. Worse, in the hardest prosecutorial cases even the city escapes (Connick), so the victim gets nothing and no one is held to account. Paying claims out of the public purse can actually blunt accountability, by absorbing the consequences that might otherwise force reform.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- WTTW — Chicago taxpayers spent $259M resolving police-misconduct lawsuits in 2025 (city Dept. of Law analysis)
- Legal Aid Society — NYPD misconduct cost NYC taxpayers over $117M in 2025 ($796M+ since 2019)
- Monell v. Department of Social Services (1978) — § 1983 municipal liability
- Connick v. Thompson (2011) — when even the municipality escapes liability
- AP — Chicago’s $90M Ronald Watts global settlement (176 lawsuits)
- Innocence Project / NYT — the $41M Central Park Five settlement (2014)