Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says those figures reveal an increasing problem of police wrongdoing during Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration.
She says the rise in payouts parallels an increase in police-abuse complaints made to the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne says payouts don't always reflect misconduct because the city frequently settles cases in which the police are innocent of wrongdoing.
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