How Police Settlements Are Impacting Buffalo's City Budget

The Empire State’s second-largest city has some potentially tough days ahead for it. It’s been well known for a while that the financial situation in Buffalo is tenuous at best. While things may not be as bad as they were in the early 2000s, when New York State had to impose a control board to get Buffalo under control, things are looking quite bleak.

That sounds especially true if figures that were recently released by the City of Buffalo Comptroller are accurate. According to reporting from WGRZ-TV, the city is anywhere from $40 to $80 million in the hole.

There are plenty of reasons why the finances are where they are, and while help may be on the way from Albany, we have to recognize that one of the most concerning reasons for this deficit is several bad actions from the police department.

Buffalo Police Settlements Have Hit Buffalo’s Budget Hard

The number of police misconduct lawsuits that Buffalo has had to settle is astounding. According to reporting from Investigative Post last year, there have been multiple settlements that have cost the city millions of dollars. In fact, in some cases, the city of Buffalo spends more money on brutality settlements than on some basic services.

Since 2020, Buffalo has had several multi-million dollar settlements, including at least two that required the city to borrow large sums of money to be able to afford to pay. The most egregious settlements the city had to pay were:

$4,500,000 to Wilson Morales after being shot by Buffalo Police Officers, which left him permanently paralyzed.
$6,500,000 to Josue Ortez after being wrongly convicted in court and spending 10 years in jail, after Buffalo Police Detectives fabricated evidence.
$1,100,000 to James Kistner after BPD officers hit him with a police car and then strip-searched him.
$3,300,000 to the family of William Sager after a BPD officer helped to cover up a club owner pushing the Air National Guard member, who died, down a set of stairs.

In the end, it's the people of Buffalo who are most impacted by these actions, and if things don't improve soon, Buffalo may not be able to afford much of anything.