New York Is Said to Settle Suits Over Arrests at 2004 G.O.P. Convention
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: December 23, 2013
The City of New York has agreed to resolve hundreds of federal civil rights claims filed by people who said they were unjustly arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention, according to people familiar with the cases.
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More than 1,800 people were arrestedthe week of the convention, mostly for minor violations, and many were put in a temporary detention center at a Hudson River pier. People held there said they slept on floors covered by soot and grease, and some said they left with rashes or respiratory problems. Some were held for two days or more before seeing a judge — exceeding the 24-hour limit set by the courts.
The arrests led to more than 600 individual claims, of which 112 have been settled. Lawyers also filed a class-action claim covering those who did not file suits.
The agreement would settle all or most remaining lawsuits, and is expected to include payments totaling several million dollars, according to people with knowledge of the cases, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the agreement had not yet been made public.
A formal announcement is expected after a federal judge approves the agreement. Plaintiffs’ lawyers declined to comment, and officials from the city’s Law Department did not respond on Tuesday to email inquiries about the agreement.
The city had previously paid $2.1 million to settle 112 claims connected to the convention, according to the comptroller’s office. A spokeswoman for the Law Department said the city had spent $16 million in lawyers’ fees and expenses defending cases from the convention, which was held from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, 2004.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly have said repeatedly that the police performed admirably, allowing hundreds of thousands to protest peacefully while guarding against the possibility of vandalism and violence.
Yet there were many critics of the Police Department’s actions: Officers with long orange nets swept up dozens of people at a time, including bicyclists on a raucous ride, people engaged in civil disobedience and passers-by who said that they had no connection to demonstrations.
Last year, a Federal District Court judge ruled that the police had wrongly surrounded and arrested more than 200 marchers on a sidewalk in Lower Manhattan during the convention.
Protesters contended that the mass arrests and prolonged detentions had been calculated to keep them off the streets. Police officials said the many arrests simply overwhelmed the system. On the last day of the convention, a State Supreme Court justice ordered the release of more than 550 of those arrested who had not seen a judge.
Charges against most of the 1,806 people arrested during the convention were dismissed outright or dropped after six months as part of an agreement typical for minor offenses. Of those, about 400 cases were dismissed based on videotape evidence that contradicted the original charges.
City officials said many police actions were justified by threats documented by the department’s intelligence division, whose members infiltrated activist, environmental and church groups across the country and abroad. Plaintiffs’ lawyers asked for those reports to be released, saying they would show that protesters presented little real danger.
About 600 pages that were unsealed showed that the police had filed information on people planning lawful activities as well as those bent on disruption. An appeals panel ruled that about 1,800 pages should stay secret because their release “could undermine the safety of law enforcement personnel” and the ability to conduct future investigations.
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