1. What’s the break down between settlements and legal fees and who got the largest payments?
A: This station did a report this spring on civil rights lawsuit payouts from police between 2020 and 2023, showing $13.5 million in that time.
When you add in all claims — auto accidents, property damage — the department paid almost $19 million: $16.5M in settlements and $2.2M in legal fees just last year.
The largest payout was a civil rights one, to the family of Seth Greenstone, who was shot in the head and survived but has lasting damage, and can’t speak.
His family was paid $6.25 million, the department also paid over $400,000 in legal fees.
The department paid $500,000 to Christopher Jones, plus $100,000 in legal fees, also a civil rights suit, after the ACLU helped him sue the Clark County Detention Center, alleging it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, and both the state and U.S. constitutions by not giving deaf inmates basic aids and services like sign language interpreters, visual aids, medical appointments, and fire alarms.
Jones spent more than two years at CCDC but had his requests for services denied.
A third civil rights suit was from Keyherra Green, who was also paid $500,000 for being wrongfully arrested for the murder of a 73-year-old man and spent 72 days in jail when another woman was found to have committed the crime. The department also paid over $300,000 in legal fees.
The Review Journal got $600,000 in a settlement where the paper accused the department of violating public records law and hiding records related to the deadly 2019 Alpine Motel fire that killed 6 people and injured 13, and a 2018 police investigation into a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper. The settlement pays the newspaper’s legal fees and the department paid its own $150,000 in legal fees
There were 30 more settlements between $100,000 and $200,000, and hundreds of payments under $100,000, for things like property damage.
2. How does this compare to previous years?
A: In 2023, the department spent over $16 million on dozens of lawsuits, and there are always big payouts in one form or another.
That year the largest was $11.5M to Jasmine King, who sued the department after police set off explosives at her door without warning, hitting King in the face and causing her permanent eye damage, her lawsuit said. The dept paid $1.8 million and the rest is covered by the depts’ insurance policy.
Another large payout was $1.75 million to the family of person who died in police custody, Jason Dickman who was strangled to death by an inmate at Clark County Detention Center in May 2021.
Those were the two big settlements that year, then there’s over 35 more cases where the police spent between $2,000 and $325,000 in 2023.
There’s an important distinction between 2023 and 2024 — In 2024, there was $5.5 million spent on smaller claims for bodily injury from an automobile, property damage both from autos and non-autos. We don’t have those records from 2023, so it’s hard to say whether it was more or less money spent in that area, it’s more than just the $16 million that we know about.
3. How do these payments compare to legal costs for other large police departments?
A: Nationally we have seen police forces settle lawsuits for large amounts, including Williamson County, Texas, which paid a $5 million settlement in 2021 for the wrongful death of Javier Ambler.
Larger police forces in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles pay out tens of millions of dollars annually in lawsuits.
NYPD paid $205M in police misconduct lawsuit settlements in 2024, the highest payout in years.