The city of Denver is paying more than $1.1 million in liability claims involving the Denver Police Department. City Council approved the claims Monday, bringing the cost of payouts involving the Denver Police Department up to more than $9 million so far in 2023.
Around $1 million will go to four people who were protesting the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and are now involved in the same lawsuit. According to the protesters' lawyers, DPD officers fired PepperBall guns, tear gas, flashbang grenades and other weapons at peaceful demonstrators.
Since the 2020 protests, the city has settled with a number of other people who have also claimed they were injured by PepperBalls, stun grenades and other weapons shot by DPD while peacefully protesting. In the aftermath of the protests, DPD suspended two officers for using chemical weapons on protesters.
"This settlement finally provides plaintiffs compensation for their injuries," said Elizabeth Wang, an attorney with the firm Loevy & Loevy who tried some of the cases involved, in a statement Monday. "This lawsuit - and the many others that have been resolved in favor of protestors - sends a message that cities face serious consequences if their police inflict violence on peaceful protestors."
Council also approved an additional $50,000 for Lindsay Minter and $50,000 for former mayoral candidate Terrance Roberts, both involving incidents with DPD dating back to the summer of 2020.
Andy McNulty, a lawyer with Killmer, Lane & Newman, said that police pepper sprayed Roberts after he was leaving a peaceful counter-protest in late summer of 2020, and that Minter, who helped organize marches in the aftermath of Floyd's death, was hit by a projectile during a peaceful protest.
DPD did not respond to Denverite's request for comment.
The set of claims come two weeks after City Council approved $4.72 million in a class action lawsuit involving more than 300 Black Lives Matter protesters arrested during a city curfew in May and June of 2020. That was the second part of a 2022 case that also won $14 million in damages over police misconduct involving 12 protesters.
"These settlements, including the ones that are being approved today, show that this is a huge problem that hasn't been addressed in a real meaningful way," McNulty said, pointing out that Denver taxpayers bear the cost of these settlements. "There's been no accountability, no reckoning... The police department is defunding us, is what's happening through these claims."
