Denver pays $1.6M to 7 protesters "brutalized" by police during George Floyd protests
The Denver City Council voted Monday to approve a total payout of over $1.6 million to seven protesters who were injured by the Denver police during the George Floyd protests in downtown Denver.
The city reached settlement agreements to those protesters who "stood up against police brutality and were met with the very same brutality they were protesting," read a statement from Killmer, Lane and Newman, a law firm representing the protesters. "These settlements will provide necessary restitution for the violence that the police inflicted upon our clients."
Those plaintiffs, as part of the settlement, received the following amounts:
- Gabriel Schlough: $575,000;
- Mercii Thomas: $500,000;
- Robert Dayton: $225,000;
- Darrell Hampton: $175,000;
- Eric Weber: $135,000;
- Titus and Diego Peterson: $12,500.
The law firm also represented student protester Michael Acker and USA Today reporter Trevor Hughes, who were injured by police in those protests and settled for $500,000 and $485,000, respectively.
Graphic photos shared by the law firm show brutal, sometimes bloody and gory injuries sustained by those protesters at the hands of police.
Video shared by the firm shows Hampton standing on the sidewalk filming Denver officers in riot gear when one officer appears to shoot him with an impact munition. Impact munitions refer broadly to things like beanbag rounds, rubber-tipped bullets, pepper balls and similar weapons.
A separate video shows Thomas standing in the road with her hands raised up as dozens of Denver riot police officers approached her and shot her in the head with an impact munition.
"The tactics employed by law enforcement during the George Floyd protests in Denver were brutal and intolerable in a society that believes in freedom of speech," attorney Andy McNulty of Killmer, Lane and Newman, said in a statement Monday. "Officers inflicted rampant police violence on peaceful protesters. These settlements compensate our clients for the pain and suffering they endured, but until there is a reckoning within society that law enforcement does nothing to make us safer, and in fact poses a significant danger to those who would dare speak out and stand up for their rights, these incidents will continue to happen."
The Denver Police Department declined to offer a comment for this story.
Police departments in major cities across the country have settled similar lawsuits for billions of dollars, according to various CBS News reports. Denver police alone have paid out over $2 billion as a result of these lawsuits stemming from 2020 racial justice protests, including a $14 million settlement last year.