MANHATTAN (CN) — The NYPD's settlement to overhaul the response to protests to formally end its crowd control tactic of "kettling" protesters won approval from a New York federal judge Wednesday, dismissing objections brought by the city's largest police union to torpedo the record award reached last year.
Eleven months after Senior U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon signed off on New York City’s highest per-person settlement in class action brought by hundreds of protesters who say the police brutalized them during a 2020 demonstration in the Bronx over the murder of George Floyd, the judge cleared the settlement after denying the Police Benevolent Association’s motion to reject the settlement.
"Under well-developed precedent, it is clear that the PBA will not suffer 'legal prejudice' if the court dismisses the claims for injunctive relief pursuant to the terms of the settlement or dismissal,” the Bill Clinton appointee wrote in a 41-page opinion made public Wednesday.
“Every party to the lawsuit, including the PBA, had an opportunity to review the proposed settlement at every stage and to participate, to the extent it wished to do so, in the mediation. There is not a whiff of collusion or anything improper in the settlement's devising,” she wrote.
The ruling garnered praise from the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society.
“We’re gratified that the court saw the PBA’s opposition for what it was a baseless hail Mary that would perpetuate the abuses we saw in 2020,” New York Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director Molly Biklen and The Legal Aid Society attorney Jennvine Wong wrote in a joint statement. “Now, in partnership with the attorney general and our plaintiffs, we can realize the promise of this settlement, which will overhaul the way the NYPD polices protest — an agreement approved by the city, lauded by Mayor Adams and supported by both the Sergeants Benevolent Association and the Detectives’ Endowment Association.”
Under the terms of the settlement reached with the New York attorney general and lawyers for the battered protesters, the NYPD agreed to end its use of kettling to surround, trap and eventually arrest protesters without first providing a warning or opportunity for them to leave the area.
PBA president Patrick Hendry disparaged the outcome on Wednesday afternoon, reiterating the union’s claim the policing reforms are “misguided.”
“If the NYPD is unable to prevent future demonstrations from devolving into chaos, the parties who signed onto this settlement must bear the blame,” he wrote in a statement.
This past September, Hendry announced the union’s objection to the settlement agreement, citing “serious concerns about its impact on the safety of police officers and all New Yorkers in future situations involving coordinated violent actions.”
“It creates a regime that will enrich anti-police advocates through yet another monitorship disguised as an ‘oversight process,‘ and it will expose police officers to more discipline for taking lawful and appropriate police action,” the PBA president wrote. “The individuals and groups responsible for the 2020 violence and destruction will surely view this agreement as a green light to create more of the same.”
With the judge’s approval, an oversight committee will begin monitoring NYPD’s implementation and compliance with the new reforms over a multiyear period.
During the first phase, the NYPD must begin changing its training and policies to comply with the terms of the agreement, including the four-tiered response system, arrest policies, use of force at public demonstrations, and treatment of members of the press.
In the second phase of the oversight period, the committee will meet regularly to review and evaluate NYPD’s response to protests. Every six months, the New York City Department of Investigation will conduct an in-depth review of two protests and make recommendations to NYPD.
In phase three, the Southern District of New York will retain jurisdiction over the agreement for an additional year, and if at any time during phase three the NYPD violates the terms of the agreement, the attorney general or the other plaintiffs may take action to bring the matter back to the federal court.
The oversight committee will be comprised of Office of the New York State Attorney General, the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation New York City Office of Corporation Counsel, the new First Amendment Activity Senior Executive, and two representatives from Legal Aid Society, New York Civil Liberties Union and the private plaintiffs.
The settlement will award $21,500 each to at least 200 protesters who say the police brutalized them during the 2020 demonstration.
The New York City Police Department was criticized for surrounding protesters and forcing their arrests in a neighborhood called Mott Haven on June 4, 2020, essentially corralling them and giving them no choice but to break a curfew that the city had implemented to stifle fiery public unrest in the wake of Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
One of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Joshua Moskovitz, compared the NYPD’s violence in Mott Haven to the historic “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, where Black civil rights protesters were brutally beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Members of the class who were given tickets to appear in court are eligible for $21,500 each plus an extra $2,500, meaning total payout from the lawsuit could cost New York taxpayers up to $10 million or more.
The New York City Department of Investigation issued a scathing report in December 2020, concluding that standardized, agencywide, in-service training related to policing protests was lacking.
In 115 pages, the report details “a number of key errors or omissions that likely escalated tensions, and certainly contributed to both the perception and the reality that the department was suppressing rather than facilitating lawful First Amendment assembly and expression.”
Attorney General Leticia James brought her civil complaint a month later in the Southern District of New York.
The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York is the largest municipal police union in the nation and represents nearly 50,000 active and retired NYC police officers.
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