The City of New York agreed to pay a $13.7 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by protesters who accused NYPD officers of using unlawful policing tactics and violating the rights of demonstrators during the 2020 protests and rioting sparked by the death of George Floyd.
The city has agreed to pay out $9,950 per person to up to 1,380 people who were “arrested and/or subjected to force by N.Y.P.D. officers” during protests at 18 different locations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn in May and June of 2020, according to the New York Times.
The city denied liability in the settlement agreement and also denied the NYPD had a pattern or practice that violated anyone’s rights.
Lawyers for the protesters from the left-leaning National Lawyers Guild told the outlet the settlement is the largest ever paid to protesters.
“N.Y.P.D.’s suppression of dissent has continued through numerous mayoral administrations,” said Wylie Stecklow, an attorney for the protesters.
Some involved in the class-action suit were arrested, while others said they were not arrested but were on the receiving end of police conduct intended to prevent them from exercising their First Amendment rights.
The suit accused police of indiscriminately using pepper spray or batons on protesters and using crowd-control tactics like kettling, which involves encircling protesters so they’re unable to leave a contained area.
The city agreed to pay at least $21,500 each to some 320 protesters who said NYPD used the kettling tactic against them on June 4, 2020 in the Bronx. The protesters said police officers were swinging batons and using pepper spray while demonstrators were surrounded by police.
Between May 28 and June 7, 2020, police made more than 2,000 protest-related arrests, according to the New York State attorney general’s office.
Then-mayor Bill de Blasio implemented a curfew as protests and rioting overwhelmed the city.
“Some protests devolved to looting and rioting,” lawyers for the city wrote in a filing. “Protesters set police cars ablaze; vandalized precinct houses; threw rocks, bricks, bottles at officers; stabbed, punched, bit officers; and hurled Molotov cocktails at officers.”
Attorneys for the city included photographs in a court filing of four bloodied police officers who were allegedly injured by protesters.
The class-action lawyers shared records of officers swinging batons, using pepper spray, and shoving demonstrators that were taken from thousands of police body-camera and helicopter videos.
One of the incidents in the lawsuit involved 33-year-old Sabrina Zurkuhlen who says police beat, kicked, and arrested her during a protest march on the West Side Highway.
She said she was recording officers with her phone when an officer pointed at her, lunged at her and knocked the phone from her hands. The officer allegedly struck her with a baton as he tackled her. The suit says other officers beat and kicked Zurkuhlen and she was held in police custody for 8.5 hours before she was issued a summons for a curfew violation, which was later dismissed. She said she never got her phone back.
While attorneys for the protests said the alleged police misconduct was the results of decades of the NYPD’s failure to “appropriately train its officers on the proper handling of First Amendment assemblies,” the city denied this assertion.