01.03.2023
New York City agreed to pay $21,500 to hundreds of protesters who were rounded up, beaten and detained by the Police during a protest in 2020 following the murder of African-American George Floyd.
The New York City Hall has reached an agreement to end a class action lawsuit brought by the affected protesters and that it was sent late this Tuesday to the court in charge of the case, which must still approve the terms agreed by the two parties.
According to the agreement, some 320 people can opt for this compensation, although slightly less than a hundred could be excluded for having agreed on their own other type of compensation. Thus, it is expected that in total the city of New York will spend several million dollars to close this case, which is added to many others in which the authorities of the Big Apple have been forced to pay significant amounts of money for cases of violence or police abuse.
Human Rights Watch: “Police committed serious abuses”
The protest in question took place in the Bronx district in June 2020, at the height of the massive demonstrations against racism and police violence that took place across the United States after the Floyd’s death. The man lost his life in Minneapolis (Minnesota) after an agent pressed his knee against his neck for more than nine minutes while trying to stop him for using a counterfeit bill to pay in a store.
In New York, the protests in some cases led to looting and destruction of property that led the authorities to decree a nightly curfew and resulted in heavy police charges on several occasions, including against peaceful protesters.
In the case of the demonstration in the Bronx, organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced that the Police he committed gross abuses by planning this operation to carry out mass arrests, corralling protesters so they could not disperse before curfew, and going too hard against people who were only exercising their right to protest.
jov (efe, cnn)
