The city of New York has arrived at a significant $13 million agreement to conclude a civil rights lawsuit involving approximately 1,300 individuals.

The plaintiffs allege they were either arrested or suffered physical harm by law enforcement officers amid racial injustice protests that enveloped the city during the summer of 2020.

This settlement, if ratified by a judge, will be one of the costliest payouts in history concerning mass arrests, according to experts. It will also help the city sidestep a potentially high-priced and politically complex trial.

The lawsuit scrutinized 18 incidents from the protests that ignited in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. With few exceptions, persons who were arrested or were subject to force by NYPD officers at these events will be eligible for $9,950 in damages, stated the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Despite the serious accusations, city attorneys maintained throughout the two-year legal proceedings that police were reacting to an unruly and unparalleled situation. They cited protests during which law enforcement vehicles were incinerated and officers targeted with rocks and plastic bottles.

Adama Sow, one of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, recounted a harrowing experience. Sow said they were entrapped by police without any warning, their hands bound with zip ties until circulation was cut off, and then held in a stifling correctional bus for several hours.

“It was so disorganized, but so intentional,” Sow remarked. “They seemed set on traumatizing everyone,” Sow stated to the Associated Press.

The city invoked qualified immunity, defending its actions as lawful and within the line of duty. Legal representatives for the city insisted that there was no systematic effort to prevent citizens from exercising their right to protest.

The lawsuit involved former Mayor Bill de Blasio, retired NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, and other police leaders as defendants. However, neither the city nor the NYPD will be obligated to admit to any misconduct under the terms of the settlement agreement.

The class action, however, was not designed to change NYPD’s practices. There are several other lawsuits, including one from New York Attorney General Letitia James, currently active, seeking for a federal overseer to monitor NYPD’s policing of protests.

This settlement follows another one announced earlier this year awarding $21,500 to those arrested by police during a demonstration in the Bronx. That payout could amount to nearly $10 million, including legal fees.

Further, more than 600 individuals have lodged personal claims against New York City related to police action during the 2020 protests, according to the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander. About half of these claims have resulted in settlements and resolutions, costing the city nearly $12 million thus far.

The mounting cost to taxpayers should serve as a “red flag” about the NYPD’s seeming inability to rectify its “decades old problem with constitutionally compliant protest policing”, said Wylie Stecklow, an attorney for the protesters in the class action lawsuit.

“While the arc of the moral universe is indeed long, sometimes it needs reform to bend towards justice” he said.

What seems to be lost in these settlements is that the “protesters” often became rioters and looters costing millions in damages. It would seem in NYC, riots pay.

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