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San Jose approves $3.3 million settlement for George Floyd protest injuries

Excerpt from The Mercury News | Read the story here.

San Jose will pay more than $3 million to a group of people who sued the city and police department over injuries they suffered during the infamous 2020 George Floyd demonstrations downtown, with the bulk of the funds going to a man who lost an eye when police fired a projectile at him while trying to disperse a crowd.

In the fallout from the protests, the San Jose Police Department acknowledged that most of the officers on scene “lacked the sufficient training and experience” with crowd control and blamed understaffing, and banned the use of rubber bullets solely for crowd control. Then-Mayor Sam Liccardo pushed for an outright ban of the weapons in crowds but could not secure sufficient council support for his proposal.

The federal lawsuit alleged an array of constitutional and civil-rights violations related to the violent SJPD response on May 29, 2020, the first of several days of downtown protests over the notorious police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis.

Rachel Lederman, senior counsel for the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund — which formed the plaintiffs’ legal team with Shook, Hardy & Bacon, the Flynn Law Office, and Jim Chanin — said Tuesday that what happened three years ago was borne from a “de facto policy of indiscriminate violence against George Floyd protestors, and a striking lack of accountability for this violence that went all the way to the top.”

“We hope that this settlement will help push the city toward alternatives to policing and stronger oversight of the SJPD,” Lederman said.