If a New York police officer beat you, choked you, shot you, or otherwise used unreasonable physical force against you, you may have a federal civil rights claim — and you may be entitled to substantial financial compensation. Levine & Slavit, PLLC represents victims of police excessive force across New York City and Long Island.
Our attorneys have 115 years of combined experience fighting for injured New Yorkers, and we have recovered tens of millions of dollars for our clients. We understand how to build excessive force cases against the NYPD and other New York law enforcement agencies — from preserving body-worn camera footage in the first 30 days, to defeating qualified immunity, to taking your case to a federal jury when settlement isn’t enough.Call (212) 687-2777 in Manhattan or (516) 294-8282 in Mineola today to schedule a free, confidential consultation.
What Counts as Excessive Force Under New York and Federal Law?
Excessive force occurs when a police officer uses more physical force than is objectively reasonable to control a situation. Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), federal courts evaluate excessive force claims under the Fourth Amendment’s “objective reasonableness” standard, weighing three primary factors:
- The severity of the crime at issue. Force used during the arrest of a violent felony suspect is judged differently than force used against someone stopped for a minor infraction.
- Whether the suspect posed an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others at the scene.
- Whether the suspect was actively resisting arrest or attempting to flee.
For deadly force cases — police shootings — Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985) controls. An officer may not use deadly force against a fleeing suspect unless the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.
These standards are fact-intensive, and many strong cases do not look obvious until an attorney has reviewed the body-worn camera footage, the medical records, and the officer’s prior history. If you are not sure whether your case qualifies, call us. The consultation is free.
How Levine & Slavit, PLLC Handles New York Excessive Force Cases
Standing up to the NYPD or any New York law enforcement agency is intimidating. Police departments are defended by the New York City Law Department or, in Long Island, by their own municipal counsel — well-resourced legal teams whose job is to limit or eliminate the City’s exposure. Going up against them requires a firm that knows how excessive force cases are actually won.
When you retain our firm, our New York excessive force lawyers will:
- Negotiate aggressively with the Law Department — and try the case to a federal jury when the City refuses to value it fairly.
- Send immediate preservation letters and FOIL requests for body-worn camera footage, dashcam footage, and radio runs before they can be overwritten or “lost”
- Canvass for bystander cell phone video and surveillance footage from nearby businesses, residences, and transit cameras
- Pull the officer’s CCRB complaint history and prior civil-rights lawsuit record
- Retain use-of-force experts — typically former senior law enforcement officers — to testify about what trained officers should have done
- Work with treating physicians, neuropsychologists, life-care planners, and vocational economists to document the full cost of your injuries
- Build the qualified immunity strategy from day one, identifying the controlling Second Circuit and Supreme Court cases that put the officer on notice
- Plead Monell claims against the City of New York where the misconduct reflects a policy, custom, or failure to train
Types of Excessive Force Cases We Handle
Our practice focuses on excessive force claims involving meaningful physical injury. The most common patterns we see in New York include:
Chokeholds and Neck Restraints
Following the 2014 death of Eric Garner, New York City enacted Administrative Code § 10-181, which criminalizes chokeholds, knee-on-neck restraints, and any restraint that compresses the diaphragm during an arrest. Chokehold and neck-restraint cases in NYC now carry both a federal civil rights claim and a violation of city law — a combination that significantly strengthens settlement leverage.
Wrongful Police Shootings
Whether the victim survived or the case is being brought by the family of someone killed by police, shooting cases require immediate investigation. Ballistic evidence, scene measurements, and bystander video can be lost within days. We move fast.
Taser and Conducted Electrical Weapon (CEW) Misuse
Taser deployments against compliant individuals, against people in mental health crisis, or repeated cycles after a person is already incapacitated are some of the most clearly excessive uses of force we see.
K-9 Deployments
Police dog bites that continue too long, are released against non-violent suspects, or are used against people who have already surrendered.
Baton and Impact Weapon Strikes
Strikes to the head, strikes against handcuffed individuals, and strikes that continue after the person stops resisting.
Pepper Spray and OC Misuse
Use against restrained or compliant individuals, deployment in confined spaces, and combined use with other force multipliers.
Restraint Asphyxia and Prone Restraint Injuries
Positional asphyxia from being held face-down with weight on the back while restrained. These cases are often catastrophic.
Force Against Compliant Subjects
Tackles, slams, and takedowns of people who were not resisting — frequently captured on body-worn camera or bystander video.
Force in Precincts, Holding Pens, and Jails
Excessive force does not end at the moment of arrest. Officers in NYPD precinct holding cells, court holding pens, and city jails can also be liable for unjustified physical force.
Common Injuries in NYC Excessive Force Cases
The injuries from police use of force are often catastrophic and lifelong. Our cases regularly involve:
- Traumatic brain injury (TBI) from baton strikes, slams, and falls during takedowns
- Gunshot wounds and the long-term medical and vocational consequences that follow
- Orbital, facial, rib, spinal, and limb fractures from beatings and slams
- Dental and oral injuries
- Nerve damage from prolonged restraint and overly tight handcuffing
- Vision and hearing loss
- PTSD, depression, and other psychological injuries — these are real damages, and we make sure they are documented and presented to a jury
- Wrongful death
We treat the medical workup as a full part of the case, not an afterthought.
The Laws That Protect You
Several federal and New York legal frameworks apply to police excessive force claims.
Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act (42 U.S.C. § 1983) is the primary federal statute. It allows you to sue a police officer in federal court for violating your constitutional rights while acting “under color of law” — that is, while exercising authority granted by their position. Excessive force is the single most common type of Section 1983 claim filed nationally.
The Fourth Amendment protects you from unreasonable seizures, which includes the use of unreasonable force during an arrest or investigatory stop. This is the constitutional source of nearly every excessive force claim brought by an arrestee.
The Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause governs excessive force used against pretrial detainees — people who have been arrested but not yet convicted.
The Eighth Amendment governs excessive force used against convicted prisoners.
New York state law provides parallel claims for assault, battery, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress against the officer and, through respondeat superior, against the City of New York or other employing municipality.
NYC Administrative Code § 10-181 criminalizes diaphragm-compressing restraints and chokeholds, providing additional leverage in NYC cases.Monell claims (Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978)) allow you to sue the City directly when the misconduct resulted from an official policy, custom, or pattern — including a failure to train, supervise, or discipline officers. These claims are not subject to qualified immunity.
Defeating Qualified Immunity in Excessive Force Cases
Qualified immunity shields individual officers from personal liability unless they violated a “clearly established” constitutional right that a reasonable officer would have known about. It is the defense you have probably heard about, and yes, it is a real obstacle — but it is not an automatic win for the officer.
Second Circuit caselaw is well-developed on what kinds of force are clearly unreasonable. Examples where qualified immunity routinely fails include:
- Force used against a suspect who is already restrained or handcuffed
- Continued strikes after a suspect has stopped resisting
- Shootings of unarmed, non-threatening individuals
- Chokeholds in violation of clearly established department policy
- K-9 deployments against suspects who had already surrendered
We approach every case with a qualified immunity strategy from the start — identifying the controlling caselaw that put the officer on notice, building the factual record to show the force was clearly unreasonable, and, where appropriate, pleading Monell claims against the City that bypass qualified immunity entirely.
Evidence in a New York Excessive Force Case
Excessive force cases live or die on evidence — and the most important evidence has a short shelf life. We move fast on:
- NYPD body-worn camera (BWC) footage. Every NYPD patrol officer wears a BWC. We send preservation letters and FOIL requests immediately to prevent footage from being overwritten or destroyed.
- Bystander cell phone video. New York City’s Right to Record Act protects the public’s right to record police activity, and bystander video is often the most powerful evidence in a force case. We canvass for it before witnesses scatter.
- Surveillance video from nearby businesses, residential buildings, MTA cameras, and ATMs.
- The officer’s CCRB complaint history. The Civilian Complaint Review Board’s records can show prior force complaints — valuable for impeachment and Monell pattern claims.
- Prior civil-rights lawsuits filed against the same officer, available through federal court records.
- NYPD Patrol Guide violations. When the force used violated the NYPD’s own written policy, that fact carries real weight with juries.
- Medical records and contemporaneous photographs of your injuries.
Use-of-force expert testimony from former law enforcement officers who can explain to a jury what trained officers should have done.
Compensation You Can Recover
Damages in successful excessive force cases can be substantial.
Economic damages include past and future medical expenses, past and future lost income, loss of earning capacity, and life-care plan costs for catastrophic injuries.
Non-economic damages include pain and suffering, emotional distress, PTSD, loss of enjoyment of life, and damage to reputation. In wrongful death cases, this includes conscious pain and suffering of the decedent and pecuniary losses to surviving family.
Punitive damages. Excessive force is one of the few personal injury contexts in which punitive damages against the individual officer are realistically available. Punitives are awarded when the officer’s conduct was egregious, malicious, or showed reckless indifference to your rights.Attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. When you prevail on a Section 1983 claim, the federal civil-rights fee-shifting statute requires the defendant to pay your reasonable attorney’s fees on top of your damages. That matters: it changes the economics of your case and is one of the reasons we are able to take excessive force cases on a contingency basis.
Filing Against the NYPD: Deadlines You Cannot Miss
Excessive force claims involving NYC police are subject to overlapping deadlines. Missing any one of them can destroy your case.
Notice of Claim — 90 days. Under New York General Municipal Law § 50-e, you must file a Notice of Claim with the City of New York within 90 days of the incident if you plan to sue under state law for assault, battery, or negligence. This is the single most commonly missed deadline in police misconduct cases.
State-law claims — 1 year and 90 days. State tort claims against the City must be commenced within one year and 90 days of the incident.
Section 1983 federal claims — 3 years. Federal civil-rights claims have a three-year statute of limitations in New York.
Wrongful death — 2 years. State-law wrongful death claims must be filed within two years of the death, in addition to the 90-day Notice of Claim requirement.
CCRB complaints are not a substitute for a lawsuit. The NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board accepts misconduct complaints, but a CCRB complaint is administrative — it does not preserve your civil claims and the deadlines above continue to run. Filing a CCRB complaint can sometimes be part of the overall strategy, but it is not a substitute for retaining a lawyer.
If you are not sure how much time you have, call us today. The 90-day Notice of Claim window comes up faster than most people expect.
What We Handle — and What We Don’t
Levine & Slavit, PLLC focuses our police-related practice on excessive force cases. That means:
We handle:
- Police beatings and brutality cases
- Wrongful police shootings (survivors and wrongful death)
- Taser, K-9, baton, and chokehold injury cases
- Force used during arrests, including against compliant subjects
- In-custody injuries from use of force
- Force-related wrongful death
We generally do not take:
- Standalone false arrest or unlawful search cases that do not involve significant physical force
- Standalone malicious prosecution cases without a force component
- Civil-rights complaints that do not involve physical injury
If your case falls outside our practice area, we are happy to refer you to attorneys who handle those matters.
Why Levine & Slavit, PLLC
Police excessive force cases are not routine personal injury work. They require a firm willing to take on the City of New York and the NYPD, with the experience to navigate qualified immunity and Monell pleading and the resources to retain expert witnesses and try cases when the City refuses to settle fairly.
Our firm has spent over a century combined representing seriously injured New Yorkers. We know how to investigate, how to value a case, and how to try one. If your case has merit, we will pursue it with everything we have.
Free, Confidential Consultation
If you or a loved one was the victim of excessive force by a New York police officer, contact Levine & Slavit, PLLC today. Consultations are free, and we handle excessive force cases on a contingency basis — you pay nothing unless we recover for you.Manhattan: (212) 687-2777Mineola: (516) 294-8282