NEW YORK — New York City has agreed to pay several million dollars to settle a lawsuit brought by protesters who say they were assaulted, abused and trapped by police using a technique known as kettling at a demonstration in the wake of George Floyd’s killing.
In court papers this week, the city said it will pay $21,500 to each of at least 200 protesters who were detained, arrested or met with force by police during a June 4, 2020, protest in the Bronx’s Mott Haven neighborhood.
The city said it will also pay $21,500 per plaintiff for legal costs and an extra $2,500 to protesters who were given court appearance tickets, meaning the bill from the class-action lawsuit could top $10 million.
A judge must still approve the settlement. Plaintiffs’ lawyers said they believe it would be the city’s highest per-person settlement in a mass-arrest class-action lawsuit and heralded it as a “historic agreement.”
It’s one of several lawsuits alleging that New York police officers mistreated protesters who took to the streets nightly after the police killing of Floyd in Minnesota. Similar protests happened in cities and towns across the U.S.
In the Mott Haven protest, the Police Department was criticized for kettling protesters, essentially trapping them and giving them no choice but to break a curfew that the city had implemented to quell unrest.
The civil-rights organization Human Rights Watch released a report in October 2020 citing evidence that police planned an aggressive crackdown on the protesters.
Bicycles were used to form a wall around protesters while officers, including some in riot gear, attacked demonstrators — beating them with batons, kicking and punching them, and spraying them with pepper spray, the report said.
At least 61 people were hurt, with injuries including a broken nose, lost tooth, sprained shoulder, broken finger, split lip, black eyes and bruises.
“The violence unleashed upon us that night was intentional, unwarranted, and will be with me for the rest of my life,” plaintiff Henry Wood said in a statement. “What the NYPD did, aided by the political powers of New York City, was an extreme abuse of power.”
The Police Department said the protests in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic were a “challenging moment” and that it has since reformed how it responds to protests.