Miranda Devine: Central Park crime surges as NYC criminals cash in on class-action settlements

A woman was raped at knifepoint in Central Park at 8:30 Saturday night after being dragged off Fifth Avenue near East 66th Street.It was the fifth rape in the park this year.Yet, instead of protecting women from rapists, the city is paying criminals up to $35.5 million in a class-action settlement. They’re even advertising for takers in the subway. “If you were held in Brooklyn Central Booking between April 8, 2017, to December 27, 2019, or in a Central Booking Facility anywhere in New York City between February 3, 2020, to March 1, 2023, you may be entitled to compensation,” say the giant yellow and black ads titled “LEGAL NOTICE.

CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENT.” “The City of New York has agreed to pay up to $21,500,000 into a settlement fund.” Anyone the cops threw in a city lockup for a couple of hours can get up to $475 plus up to $120 in expenses as compensation for every time they had to share “malodorous” cells with cockroaches and rodents. Since the ads went up, the settlement has grown to $35.475 million after the city found more former jail cell occupants to whom they could give our money. On Oct.23, US District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis added a supplementary order to his original June settlement approval, increasing the payout by a whopping 65% after notices started being placed around town and mailed to potential beneficiaries in July. Lo and behold, the city was inundated with claims “received from individuals whose names did not appear on the class list, and Defendants [generous city officials] conducted an investigation and determined that the class list was underinclusive.” They added another 76,630 lucky people to the group who might be eligible — for every one of the 170,000 times they landed in a cell. Exactly how many total potential claimants exist is not spelled out, but the lawsuit mentions “hundreds of thousands of persons detained in the City’s Central Booking facilities during the Class Period” and who ...