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OWS Protesters Get $600K Settlement for False Arrests.

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Published on Thursday, 12 June 2014 13:20
Written by editor

June 10, 2014 at 9:51 am.

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Categories: Front Page, Open Mic

ows-bull-policeAs the New York Times reports

The city has agreed to pay nearly $600,000 to settle allegations that police wrongfully arrested a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters, marking the largest settlement to date in an Occupy-related civil rights lawsuit, the marchers’ lawyers said Tuesday.

Of course that’s not true. Both Scott Olsen, who received a $4.5 million settlement, and Kayvan Sebeghi, who received $645,000, got larger settlements. However, this settlement is the largest settlement so far in New York City and likely anywhere else in the country with the exception of Oakland. The Times report continues:

The $583,000 pact involves... 14 demonstrators who said police ordered them to leave but prevented them from doing so and arrested them in lower Manhattan early on New Year’s Day 2012…

“The police, led by supervising officers, stopped peaceful protesters on the sidewalk, surrounded them with a blue wall of police, told them to disperse, and then arrested them before they possibly could,” one of their lawyers, Wylie Stecklow, said in a statement. “This was an unacceptable violation of basic constitutional rights.”

These violations seem similar to OPD’s mass arrest of Oscar Grant protesters in 2010, and the J28 mass arrests of some 400 Occupy Oaklanders in 2012 on ‘Move-In Day.’ A lawsuit regarding the Oscar Grant mass arrests was settled last year for more than $1,000,000, but came out to less than $10,000 per arrestee. Contrast that to this Occupy Wall Street settlement which is more than $40,000 per person.

The J28 lawsuit is still ongoing.

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