Adama Sow, one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said their group of marchers were trapped by police without warning. Sow and the other arrestees were placed in zip ties until their hands turned purple, then held in a sweltering correctional bus for several hours.
“It was so disorganized, but so intentional,” Sow said. “They seemed set on traumatizing everyone.”
The city invoked qualified immunity, which protects police officers from lawsuits stemming from lawful work performed in the line of duty, and defended the decision to arrest medics and legal observers as within the rights of the department.
While attorneys for the plaintiffs cited past crackdowns on large demonstrations, including during the 2004 Republican National Convention, as evidence of longstanding “systemic violations” by the NYPD, attorneys for the city said there was no systematic effort to deprive people of their right to protest.
“There is no history — or present or future — of unconstitutional policing,” Georgia Pestana, an attorney for the city, wrote in a memo. “There is no frequent deprivation of constitutional rights.”
The lawsuit named former Mayor Bill de Blasio and retired NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea as well as other police leaders as defendants. Under the settlement agreement, neither the city nor the NYPD is required to admit any wrongdoing.
Protesters who were arrested on certain charges — including trespassing, property destruction, assaulting an officer, arson or weapons possession — will be excluded from the settlement. Those who were seen on video blocking police from making arrests may also be ineligible.
Unlike some other lawsuits related to the 2020 protests, the class action was not meant to force the NYPD to change its practices. There are several other lawsuits aimed at injunctive relief that are ongoing, including one brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James that calls for a federal monitor to oversee the NYPD’s policing of protests.
Another class action settlement announced earlier this year would award $21,500 to those arrested by police during one demonstration in the Bronx, a payout that could total around $10 million including legal fees.
Separately, more than 600 people have brought individual claims against New York City related to police action during the 2020 protests, according to the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander. Roughly half of them have resulted in settlements and resolutions, costing the city nearly $12 million to date.
Wylie Stecklow, an attorney for the protesters in the class action lawsuit, said the growing cost to taxpayers should serve as a “red flag” for city leaders about the NYPD’s inability to correct its “decades old problem with constitutionally compliant protest policing.”
“While the arc of the moral universe is indeed long, sometimes it needs reform to bend towards justice” he said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
