NYC to pay millions to George Floyd protesters boxed in by police

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March 1, 2023

By Bernd Debusmann Jr., BBC News

Police brutality protesters in New York, 2020 (BBC News)

New York City has agreed to pay $21,500 each to over 300 people who were allegedly boxed in and beaten during racial justice protests in 2020. If approved, the multimillion dollar deal will become one of the largest amounts ever awarded per person in a mass arrest case.

[…]

The class-action lawsuit, first filed in October 2020, accused the New York Police Department (NYPD) of a “brutal response” to a racial justice protest that took place in the Mott Haven neigbourhood of the Bronx on 4 June 2020, less than two weeks after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

Documents filed to court alleged that police boxed in the protesters – a tactic commonly known as “kettling” – before restraining them with plastic handcuffs and striking them with batons. The lawsuit added that the police operation to “suppress” protesters left many “injured and bleeding. Some protesters fainted, or lost consciousness and went into convulsions”. About 320 people were arrested, detained or “subjected to force” by officers at the event, according to the settlement document.

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