New York City will give more than $13 million — or nearly $10,000 each — to more than 1,000 protesters arrested or interacting with police during the 2020 Black Loves Matter protests over the police k#lling of George Floyd in Minnesota, New York Post is reporting.
This is following a a civil rights lawsuit settlement filed in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday. The proposed class-action settlement, which still needs to be approved by a judge, would be one of the most expensive payouts awarded in connection with a mass arrest lawsuit in history, according to experts.
The lawsuit, filed against the city, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and Commissioner Dermot Shea, as well as other police officials and officers, argued that thousands of New Yorkers who “exercised their constitutional rights” were “corralled into places where they could not escape” during the widespread.demonstrations
Under the settlement agreement, neither the city nor the NYPD is required to admit any wrongdoing. Attorneys with the National Lawyers Guild, representing the plaintiffs in New York, accused these NYPD leaders of depriving protesters of their First Amendment rights through brutal tactics and unlawful arrests.
The plaintiffs were then b£at£n “with batons, sprayed .. with pepper spra¥, and arrested without lawful justification, all without fair warning,” lawyers argued in the court documents. Plaintiffs marching against r@cially-targeted police br¥tality were allegedly “physically restrained” and put “in d@ngerously close quarters, all in the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic,” lawyers said, arguing the same tactics were not used during similarly sized protests of different issues, according to the complaint.
