New York City will pay more than $13 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of approximately 1,300 people who were arrested or beaten by police during protests over racial injustice that swept the city in the summer of 2020.
If approved by a judge, the settlement, filed in Manhattan federal court, would be one of the most expensive payments ever awarded in a mass arrest lawsuit.
The lawsuit focused on 18 of the many protests that broke out in New York City in the week following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis.
With certain exceptions, people arrested or subdued by NYPD officers in those events will be eligible to receive $9,950 in compensation, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.
The settlement, one of several stemming from the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, allows the city to avoid a lawsuit that could prove expensive and politically complicated.
This agreement comes as many other cities in the United States are negotiating their own agreements with protesters who took to the streets to denounce racist police brutality after Floyd’s death, a period of turmoil that resulted in the arrest of 10,000 people in a matter of days.
Lawyers for the National Lawyers Guild, who represented the plaintiffs in New York, accused NYPD leaders of depriving protesters of their First Amendment rights through a “coordinated” campaign of wanton brutality and illegal arrests.
The dispute lasted more than two years.
Throughout more than two years of litigation, city lawyers maintained that police were responding to a chaotic and unprecedented situation, pointing to some tumultuous protests in which police vehicles were set on fire and officers were attacked with rocks and plastic bottles.
An NYPD spokesman referred questions to the city’s Law Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.
During some of the 2020 protest marches, officers used a crowd control tactic known as “kettling,” in which they herded peaceful protesters into confined spaces and attacked them with batons and pepper spray before arresting them en masse.
Adama Sow, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said his group of protesters was rounded up by police without warning. Sow and the other detainees were handcuffed until their hands turned purple and then held in a sweltering correctional bus for several hours.
“It was so disorganized, but so intentional,” Sow said. “They seemed intent on traumatizing everyone.”
The city invoked qualified immunity, which protects police officers from lawsuits stemming from their legal work performed in the line of duty, and defended the decision to arrest doctors and legal observers as part of the department’s rights.
While lawyers for the plaintiffs cited past crackdowns on large rallies, including the 2004 Republican National Convention, as evidence of longstanding “systematic violations” by the NYPD, the city’s lawyers asserted there was no systematic effort to deprive people of their right to protest.
“There is no history – present or future – of unconstitutional policing,” Georgia Pestana, a city attorney, wrote in a memo. “There is no frequent deprivation of constitutional rights.”
Former Mayor Bill di Blasio, the defendant
The lawsuit named former Mayor Bill de Blasio and former NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, as well as other police leaders, as defendants. Under the class action settlement, neither the city nor the NYPD are required to admit liability.
Protesters who were arrested on certain charges, including trespassing, destruction of property, assaulting an officer, arson or possession of weapons, will be excluded from the agreement. Those who were seen on video obstructing the arrest of police officers may also not be eligible.
Unlike other lawsuits related to the 2020 protests, the class action lawsuit was not intended to force the NYPD to change its practices. There are several other lawsuits seeking injunctive relief that are still ongoing, including one filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James asking for a federal monitor to oversee the NYPD’s actions at the protests.
Another class action settlement announced earlier this year would award $21,500 to those arrested by police during a protest in the Bronx, compensation that could total around $10 million, including legal fees.
Additionally, according to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, more than 600 people have filed individual claims against New York City related to police action during the 2020 protests. About half of those have resulted in settlements and resolutions, costing the city nearly $12 million to date.
Wylie Stecklow, a lawyer for the protesters in the class action, said the rising cost to taxpayers should be a “red flag” to city leaders about the NYPD’s inability to correct its “decades-old problem with Constitutionally compliant policing.”
“Although the arc of the moral universe is indeed long, it sometimes needs reform to lean toward justice,” he said.
2023-07-20 20:24:57
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