George Floyd Protesters to Receive $13 Million From New York
On the evening of June 2, 2020, Sabrina Zurkuhlen joined a protest march on the West Side Highway that was spurred by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis eight days earlier.
When marchers were confronted by a line of police officers that stretched across the highway near Vesey Street, Ms. Zurkuhlen, 33, began walking backward while recording with her phone, according to a class-action lawsuit in which she was a plaintiff. An officer pointed at her, the lawsuit said, lunged at her, knocked the phone from her hands and began striking her with a baton as he tackled her.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, said other officers beat and kicked Ms. Zurkuhlen and that she was handcuffed and held in custody for about eight and a half hours before being issued a summons for a curfew violation. That summons was later dismissed, the suit said, adding that she never recovered her phone.
On Wednesday, the City of New York agreed to pay about $13.7 million to settle the class-action suit, which said that unlawful police tactics had violated the rights of protesters over several days in late May and early June of 2020. A stipulation of settlement entered into an electronic docket just before midnight stated that the city would pay $9,950 apiece to up to about 1,380 people who “were arrested and/or subjected to force by N.Y.P.D. officers” at 18 specific locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Source: The New York Times
