The city of New York has agreed to pay millions of dollars to protesters who filed a lawsuit against the police force, alleging that they were maltreated at a racial justice demonstration in June 2020 that followed the death of George Floyd.
If a federal judge authorizes the proposed settlement, each of the more than 300 persons who were detained in the city’s Bronx borough’s Mott Haven area will get $21,500.
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The June 4 protest was one of several that took place in New York City and around the nation in response to Floyd’s death, an unarmed Black man who passed away on May 25, 2020, after a Minneapolis police officer forced his neck to the ground for almost nine minutes.
Later in 2020, a class action complaint claimed that New York police had kettled hundreds of nonviolent protestors before an 8 p.m. curfew went into effect, leading to mass arrests that included the use of batons and pepper spray on some of the protesters.
In an interview, Ali Frick, one of the attorneys who initiated the lawsuit, stated: “In the course of this litigation, we learned that this operation was preplanned and coordinated at the highest levels of the NYPD.” According to her, any mass arrest-related class action lawsuit settlement looks to be the largest ever on a per-person basis.
The rally took place during a “challenging moment,” according to the New York City Police Department when police were trying to balance the right of protesters with safety concerns while also coping with the COVID-19 pandemic strains.
The department stated, “Much of the NYPD’s policies and training for policing large-scale demonstrations have been re-envisioned based on the findings of the department’s own, self-initiated analyses and on the recommendations from three outside agencies who carefully investigated that period.”
Without accounting for legal costs, the total payments might be close to $7 million, although an exact accounting was not yet available. According to court documents, several demonstrators pursued individual claims and won separate settlements, disqualifying them from receiving further payouts.
The city’s civilian police review board recommended 146 officers be disciplined for using excessive force and other improper behavior during the 2020 demonstrations last month.
A local monitoring organization found in a study published in December 2020 that police use of force, including kettling, frequently failed to distinguish between lawful protestors and criminals, escalating animosity between the two groups.
According to a Legal Aid Society research published this month, the city paid out $121 million in settlements for police wrongdoing in 2022, the highest in the previous five years.
