Largest Payouts for Police Misconduct Lawsuits in Nevada

The Las Vegas Metro Police Department paid more then $5 million from 2008 to 2011 to settle police misconduct lawsuits, the Las Vegas Sun reported. Among the biggest was a $1.7 million payout to the estate of Trevon Cole, who died in a shootout in 2010.

Cole’s family filed a civil rights lawsuit, naming Officer Brian Yant, who fired the single shot in a 2010 raid that killed 21-year-old Cole, the Sun reported. Cole was unarmed in an apartment he shared with his fiancee, Sequoia Pearce, who was pregnant at the time of the raid. Others named in the lawsuit were Sheriff Douglas Gillespie and Yant's police supervisor at the time, John Harney, the Sun noted.

The deadly shooting was caught on tape because a reality television program was shooting footage for its show at the time, the Sun said.

Urgent: Should All Police Officers Have to Wear Body Cameras?

In the lawsuit, Cole's family said the raid on the apartment was a stunt by the company, Langley Productions. The company was involved with the popular police reality show "Cops" and "Las Vegas Jailhouse," the Sun said.

“It makes for better television to show an armed raid rather than a routine arrest. As a result of this policy, practice and custom, Trevon Cole lost his life,” the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, said.

The lawsuit claimed civil rights violations battery, negligence, civil conspiracy and wrongful death, the Sun noted.

Other big payouts in Nevada went to the family of the late Dustin Boone, who received $1 million after Boone, in 2009, died in a chokehold by officers, the Sun said.

Another man, Dwayne Jackson, was paid $1.5 million in 2011. He went to prison at 18 for a 2001 robbery he didn't commit, serving close to four years after he was "misidentified in a DNA mix-up," the Sun said. Jackson did not file a lawsuit.

The Sun noted the rise of federal lawsuits filed against Metro Las Vegas police. Forty-three were filed in 2012, up from 24 in 2008, it said.

Tell Us: Does Racism Play a Role in Police Officers' Actions?

Related Stories:

• Largest Payouts for Police Misconduct Lawsuits in Michigan
• Largest Payouts for Police Misconduct Lawsuits in Missouri