New York City has reached a settlement with an Occupy Wall Street protester who was pepper-sprayed and arrested by a city police officer during a peaceful demonstration in 2011.
Debra Lea Greenberger, a lawyer representing protester Kelly Schomburg confirmed that the city agreed to settle the suit for $50,001, in addition to yet-to-be-determined legal fees.
The settlement provides a “measure of justice that was a long time coming”, Greenberger told the Guardian on Tuesday.
“My client should never have been pepper-sprayed,” Greenberger said. “She should never have been arrested. She was just a peaceful protester taking part in the Occupy Wall Street movement.”
Schomburg, who was 18 years old at the time, was among protesters who were maced, corralled and then arrested during a 2011 demonstration against economic inequality in New York. She is now 22.
A viral video from the September 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstration captured the incident. In the video, a New York police officer, later identified by the hacktivist group Anonymous as deputy inspector Anthony Bologna, pepper-sprays a group of protesters fenced in by orange netting. These images helped galvanize support for the movement.
Several protesters filed lawsuits in response to the NYPD’s crackdown on the protest movement. In total, Bologna’s actions have cost taxpayers $382,501 through settlements from at least seven lawsuits, the Daily News reported.
The NYPD responded by reprimanding Bologna for violating police department guidelines and docking him 10 vacation days, the Daily News said.
The city law department told the Associated Press that ending the case was best for the city.
The Occupy Wall Street protests began on 17 September 2011, when a few hundred protesters occupied Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan. The action set off a global movement to fight what protesters said was corrosive influence of the major financial institutions and big corporations on democracy, and to demand accountability for Wall Street’s complicity in the economic collapse.
After nearly two months in the park, protesters were forcibly removed by NYPD officers in riot gear. Hundreds of protesters, and a number of journalists, were arrested in the process. The Occupy protests continued around the world, and in New York, protesters continued to stage demonstrations near Wall Street.
