LOS ANGELES, CA – The city of Los Angeles has paid nearly $480 million since January 2019 to resolve legal disputes involving the Los Angeles Police Department, according to an analysis of City Attorney’s Office data.
The analysis covered nearly 2,000 payouts dating to January 2019, drawn from data the City Attorney’s Office released through a public records request, according to initial reports. The payouts settled claims that include excessive force, litigation over traffic accidents and lawsuits by employees who say they faced retaliation after reporting misconduct.
The LAPD’s annual lawsuit costs more than doubled from 2019 to 2025. Payouts peaked in 2024, when the city spent $178.6 million to resolve more than 300 police-related lawsuits and civil claims, before falling to just over $100 million in 2025.
Through the first six months of 2026, the city has paid $20.3 million in settlements and court judgments involving LAPD officers. Several recent large verdicts are not in that tally because the City Council had not yet approved them.
Shootings, traffic crashes and property damage drive costs
The analysis broke the total down by type of case. Police shootings account for about $104.6 million, and more than three-fourths of those payouts involved people who were under the influence or in a mental-health crisis.
Traffic incidents account for about $125 million, nearly a quarter of the total. Claims over the response to protests cost about $22 million over seven and a half years, and more than $11 million of that came from the 2020 George Floyd protests.
Property-damage payouts total nearly $40 million. They include the 2021 detonation of seized fireworks by the LAPD bomb squad that leveled a city block.
The City Council approved $21 million in settlements over the June 30, 2021, blast on 27th Street near San Pedro Street in July 2024, according to initial reports. The 14-0 vote covered 19 plaintiffs.
Employee lawsuits add at least $68.5 million
The city has paid at least $68.5 million over five years to resolve lawsuits filed by officers who alleged sexual harassment, racial discrimination or retaliation. At least 13 verdicts or settlements of $1 million or more have come since 2019, nine of them in the last three years.
In April, a jury collectively awarded $14.6 million to four LAPD officers who said they were retaliated against for reporting problems.
The City Council also voted 13-0, with Curren Price and John Lee absent, to approve a roughly $2.2 million settlement with LAPD Sgt. Bridget Pickett. She alleged discrimination, retaliation and harassment in a lawsuit filed in March 2021.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell has suggested that some officers use the department’s disciplinary system to settle personal grievances, leaving taxpayers with the legal bills.
Controller ties payouts to basic services
City Controller Kenneth Mejia said the cost of payouts takes money from everyday needs. “There’s a reason why your streetlights are out and they’re not fixed for a year, there’s a reason why your sidewalk won’t get fixed or your animal shelters are understaffed or underfunded,” Mejia said.
His office is conducting a performance audit of the city’s risk-management practices, and he said the results will be released this year. Mejia announced the audit on Aug. 7, 2025, saying liability payouts are a major reason the city is in a fiscal emergency and that behind each payout is an example of city government failing to serve residents.
In that announcement, Mejia said citywide payouts rose from $35 million in 2006 to an estimated $286 million in fiscal year 2024-25. The city’s fiscal year 2025 financial report put liability payouts at $287 million against an $87 million budget, with the LAPD accounting for $152 million.
In a report to the Budget and Finance Advisory Committee, Mejia’s office said the city paid about $1.1 billion in liability payouts from fiscal year 2020 through Dec. 31, 2025, and that police-related claims accounted for about $435 million of it. That period differs from the January 2019 start of the analysis of LAPD payouts.
City Attorney points to nuclear verdicts
City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has blamed the rising costs on how litigation of all kinds was handled before her administration and on a national trend of so-called nuclear verdicts, meaning very large jury awards.
“The system is getting inflated in a way that is unhealthy and it creates, I think, incentives to sue and to do pie-in-the-sky settlements,” she said earlier this year. She said her office evaluates each claim case by case, deciding when settling makes more sense than going to trial, where juries can decide on emotion or differing perceptions of what occurred.
Feldstein Soto has lobbied for years to change state law to limit non-economic damages. Her office proposed capping them at three times actual damages or $1 million, whichever is less, and the proposal did not pass.
Her critics say she has taken a hard-line approach, refusing to settle except where the city is clearly likely to lose in court. That stance has had mixed results, including some jury verdicts against the city that critics say could have been avoided with a settlement.
Recent trials have gone the city’s way in some cases
The city has also won several high-profile cases. In May, a jury found the LAPD not liable in the 2021 death of a 14-year-old girl in a North Hollywood store. The family had sought $100 million.
The City Attorney’s Office issued a statement on the verdict in which Feldstein Soto expressed support for the officer involved and said he has carried the burden of the girl’s death for many years.
In January, a federal court granted the city’s motion as to all of a plaintiff’s claims in a police litigation case, and the office announced a defense judgment. The office also announced that a jury returned a verdict in the city’s favor on all counts in a lawsuit over the LAPD’s response to a swatting incident that targeted a local activist.
Budget pressure meets police hiring plans
The city faced a $1 billion budget shortfall in 2025. After cost-cutting measures, it set aside funding for the LAPD to hire more than 500 new officers in the coming year.
Mayor Karen Bass released a proposed $14.85 billion budget for fiscal year 2026-27 in April, and her budget announcement says it funds the hiring of 510 new police officers. The plan sets a target of 8,555 officers and keeps a long-term goal of 9,500.
City leaders warned in fall 2024 about the strain from liability costs. City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo said then that the city’s reserves were “getting dangerously close to the … emergency level,” with reserves at 3.28% against a 2.75% emergency threshold.
Council Budget Chair Katy Yaroslavsky said at the time that every dollar spent on lawsuits is a dollar not spent on making neighborhoods safer.
Other big cities report similar costs
The rise in police-related payouts extends beyond Los Angeles. A legal defense organization found this year that New York City has paid more than $796 million since 2019 to settle lawsuits involving accusations of police misconduct, including $117 million in 2025.
In Chicago, the city is on track to exceed the $252 million it spent last year to resolve police lawsuits, which mostly involved plaintiffs who went to prison on faulty evidence, according to local reports.
Audit and Council approvals remain pending
A City Attorney’s Office report dated May 26 was filed with the City Clerk in Council File 26-0600.
The Controller’s audit of the city’s risk-management practices is due before the end of the year. The large 2026 verdicts not yet counted in the $20.3 million total still await City Council approval.
