NYPD agrees to 'largest protest settlement in history'

In what civil rights lawyers have called “the largest protest settlement in history,” New York City has agreed to pay $18 million to protesters who said they were wrongly arrested at the 2004 Republican National Convention, where then-president George W. Bush was nominated for a second term.

The settlement ends nearly a decade of legal battles between the New York Police Department and plaintiffs who said police forces mishandled their arrests and violated their First Amendment rights.

Approximately 1,800 people were arrested, out of nearly 800,000 protesters, mostly on charges of parading without a permit or disorderly conduct. The circumstances of those arrests were heavily disputed, according to a statement from the New York City law department.

Anne Marie Roderick, a 25-year-old Columbia University student from New York City, was 16 when police officers arrested her and her older sister at a street protest near Union Square. She was lying in the middle of the street and dressed in white — a symbol of peace — before she was rounded up.

Roderick told Al Jazeera she spent around 20 hours in an ad-hoc holding facility at Pier 57, an old bus depot covered in dirt and oil.

“You couldn’t really sit on the floor without getting all mucky,” Roderick said.

When police officers handed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, one girl suffered from an allergic reaction to nuts, she said. The officers eventually returned the protester's medication after having confiscated it, “but she was really upset,” Roderick recalled.

Afterward, Roderick was transferred and held for another 30 hours at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility.

Roderick doesn’t know what to expect from the settlement, but says the lawsuit was significant for political reasons.

“The settlement is very important, because the city really trampled on people’s constitutional rights in protests, and I think it’s good that they are being held accountable for that," she said. "(The arrest) was totally politically motivated. Mayor Bloomberg didn’t want things to go badly while NYC was hosting the national convention and sort of forgot about people’s rights."

Phil Stone, a lawyer from New York City, said he was wearing a green baseball cap to alert bystanders to his role as legal observer, but told Al Jazeera that police arrested him anyways, and held him at the same pier Roderick was detained for more than 24 hours.

People with RNC credentials were left alone, he said.

“The police were there to protect them,” he said. “Definitely not me.”

Donna Lieberman, executive director at the NYCLU, the civil liberties organization central to this lawsuit, said in a statement that “no lawful protester should ever be treated like a criminal in New York City, or anywhere else in the United States.”

"This historic settlement must serve as a reminder to New York City and government across the country that the right to protest is a fundamental pillar of a fair and functioning democracy. And it is the role of government and law enforcement to not only tolerate protest, but protect and defend it."

Celeste Koeleveld, a city attorney, however, told the Associated Press it was important to defend the case. The city hasn’t admitted guilt under the agreement.

"We are proud of the major victories we achieved," she said. "Among other successes, the constitutionality of key police policies used during the RNC was upheld, and an effort to restrict the NYPD's ability to police large-scale events was rejected."

Prior to Wednesday's announcement, 142 other plaintiffs who sued over the arrests had settled with the city for a total of about $1.8 million, mostly in 2007, the AP reported.

Wednesday’s settlement amounted to about $6,400 per plaintiff and about $7 million in attorney fees.

NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn said the mass arrest, blanket fingerprinting and prolonged detention of demonstrators is one of the darkest chapters in New York City’s long and proud history of protest.

“While no amount of money can undo the damage inflicted by the NYPD’s actions during the Convention, we hope and expect that this enormous settlement will help assure that what happened in 2004 will not happen again.”

With The Associated Press