Denver will pay more than $1.5 million in another set of cases involving the Denver Police Department. City Council approved the payments this week.
The settlement involves a lawsuit on behalf of more than 30 people claiming they were injured by police during the 2020 racial justice protests. The nearly $1.5 million lawsuit is the latest in a number of costly claims involving protesters injured by weapons like tear gas and PepperBalls.
Birk Baumgartner, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said cases like this are typically difficult to try because they involve a group of injured protesters who did not seek medical treatment. But he and other lawyers gathered a large enough group together to bring a case.
"Any one individual plaintiff in the suit would normally not have any real recourse in the legal system," he said. "I'm very proud of this group of people because they all came together, stuck with it for a long time and showed the city that citizens can really come together and fight back and that there is strength in numbers."
DPD declined to comment on these settlements.
Baumgartner cited clients in the case who were sprayed in the head with pepper spray and hit in the head with PepperBalls, and that his firm has a number of other similar ongoing cases. In the wake of the 2020 protests, the city changed some of its policies in the wake of the 2020 protests.
"The only way you really get a police force or a municipal government to change their policies is to make it expensive for them to continue with those policies," said Clifford Beem, another attorney who worked on the case. "I think that the ongoing litigation against the city of Denver and the Denver Police Department, I hope it's accomplishing that."
Another settlement approved Monday involved an additional $90,000 in a case involving DPD. So far this year, the city has paid more than $10 million in claims connected to DPD.
