By ADAM KLASFELD
MANHATTAN (CN) - Protesters arrested
during the 2004 Republican National Convention agreed to settle their
decade-old civil rights claims against New York City for a potentially
record-breaking $18 million.
On Nov. 22, 2004, 24 protesters sued New
York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and
dozens of other NYPD cops and officials for false arrest, punitive detention,
abuse of process and other constitutional violations. They said the city had an
indiscriminate mass arrest policy that called for the use of mesh netting and
lines of police officers to barricade and corral large groups of protesters,
reporters, legal observers, and bystanders, without giving audible dispersal
orders.
In their original complaint, the
plaintiffs said they received "cruel and inhumane" treatment in cold,
loud, chemical-strewn, makeshift cells in Pier 57, along the Hudson River.
"Guantanamo-on-the-Hudson" was a
nickname given to the pier by more than one attorney speaking Wednesday at a
press conference outside New York City Hall.
"On information and belief, the
floors of the cages in Pier 57 were covered with numerous highly toxic
chemicals and substances, including, on information and belief, those known to
be carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, hepatogenic, and immunotoxic ... The
floors of the cages in Pier 57 were also covered in other dirt and grime,"
the original complaint stated.
The protesters said in their complaint
that city police taunted them and said they would be held "until George
Bush left town."
In 2011, the protestors won class
certification, covering 1,800 individuals, and U.S. District Judge Richard
Sullivan rejected the city's defenses a year later when American Civil
Liberties Union attorney Christopher Dunn revealed in an interview settlement
was in the works.
The settlement provides $10.4 million for
the plaintiff class and $7.6 million for their lawyers.
Seven protesters did not sign onto the
settlement and still have active cases. They include two transgender women who
say that police groped their genitals "to determine their gender for
purposes of arrest processing." Another two objectors claim they have
permanent injuries after flexicuffs cut off their circulation, and the final
protester not included in the settlement says she suffered a burst ovarian cyst
in custody and that she was handcuffed to a gurney with a male police officer
in the examination room.
City lawyer Celeste Koeleveld nevertheless
spoke about "major victories" in a statement. She said that "key
police policies used during the RNC" were upheld, and an "effort to
restrict the NYPD's ability to police large-scale events was rejected."
Dunn, the ACLU lawyer, brushed off the
city's statement, calling the settlement the largest for a protest case in the
United States. The message that sends "is more powerful than any ruling
for injunctive relief," he said.
Lisa Martin, who attended the conference
as a spectator, wore a name tag stating that she was arrested five blocks away
from her Union Square home, and that she was not a registered voter at the
time. She said she was not participating in the protest when she was arrested,
and that the experience prompted her to complete her registration within a day
of her release.
"Bloomberg made me a voter," she
quipped.
Sarah Coburn, who was a speaker at the
conference, said her arrest inspired her to go to law school and "practice
law in the public interest," as spectators applauded the announcement.
Some activists appeared disappointed,
however, by legal battles that were lost and cynical that the settlement boded
change.
The New York Times reported in 2010 that
the 2nd Circuit allowed the NYPD to withhold 1,900 pages of records detailing
police surveillance in advance of the 2004 RNC.
Civil libertarian activist Bill Dobbs asked at
the press conference about the fate of those files and what happened to police
accused of civil rights violations.
"They were promoted," shouted
back Jeffrey Rothman, a lawyer for the plaintiff class. "All of them have
higher ranks now."
Some interpreted the timing of the
settlement as evidence that the administration of Bill de Blasio will put civil
liberties more on his agenda than his predecessor, but the settlement was
actually signed in November 2013, at the tail end of the Bloomberg
administration.
Jessica Rechtschaffer, who was arrested in
connection to the burning of a papier-mache dragon float, expressed cynicism at
prospects for the change under a de Blasio administration with the governor's
recent appointment of Bill Bratton as police commissioner.
Bratton also served the administration of
Rudy Giuliani.
The National Lawyers Guild's Martin Stolar
and Beldock Levine & Hoffman attorney Jonathan Moore spoke at the
conference.
