New York City has agreed to pay between $4 million and $6 million to settle a 2020 case where police officers used a practice called "kittling," according to the New York Times
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd March, 2023) New York City has agreed to pay between $4 million and $6 million to settle a 2020 case where police officers used a practice called "kittling," according to the New York Times.
"New York City has agreed to pay $21,500 to each of hundreds of demonstrators who were penned in by the police in the Bronx during racial justice protests in 2020, then charged at or beaten with batons, according to a legal settlement," a statement quoted in the New York Times said. "If a judge approves the settlement filed in federal court late Tuesday, the amount would be one of the highest ever awarded per person in a class action case of mass arrests, and could cost the city between $4 million and $6 million."
Hundreds of demonstrators who were arrested by the NYPD will receive $21,500 each. On June 4, 2020, almost 300 people who were arrested in the Bronx during nationwide protests against the murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers in May.
The lawsuit said police officers boxed in hundreds of peaceful protestors on on 136th Street and then "kettled" them. Then the cops zip tied them after they beat and pepper sprayed them. According to the New York Times, the kettling strategy was broadly defended then by former Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, who said those measures were needed because protesters were defying curfews and looters had ransacked sections of Manhattan even though the demonstrations had been largely peaceful.
The authorities approved the tactics to "suppress the protests with well-orchestrated operations corralling and violently arresting the protesters. Many protesters were left injured and bleeding. Some protesters fainted, or lost consciousness and went into convulsions," the lawsuit said.
An NYPD statement described the 2020 protests as "a challenging moment for the department as officers who themselves were suffering under the strains of a global pandemic did their utmost to help facilitate people's rights to peaceful expression all while addressing acts of lawlessness including wide-scale rioting, mass chaos, violence, and destruction."
The demonstrators' lawyers characterized the settlement as "historic." Before this agreement, the highest amount paid per person in a case of mass arrests was in 2010 when a federal judge awarded $18,000 per person - for a total of $13.7 million - to demonstrators swept up in a mass arrest during a protest near the World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings in Washington, D.C., in 2000.
