A federal judge gave final approval Wednesday to a $13.7 million settlement between the District and people who were picked up in a mass arrest during a 2000 protest near the World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings.

The D.C. government and a nonprofit civil rights organization have settled a class-action lawsuit brought by hundreds of protesters and bystanders arrested during a downtown demonstration in 2002. The District agreed to pay $8.

On September 27, 2002, D.C. Police surrounded some 400 individuals in Pershing Park. Those individuals were rounded up without warning, arrested, and transferred to the police academy where they were hogtied for hours.

The District of Columbia will pay $8.25 million to settle a class action brought by protesters rounded up in mass arrests during the 2002 Pershing Park demonstrations. It would bring an end to nearly eight years of litigation.

D.C. AG Peter Nickles has reached a settlement in one of the two remaining Pershing Park cases. The deal, which came together last night, includes a District payout of approximately $8.25 million to the roughly 400 plaintiffs in the Barham class action lawsuit.

A D.C. police detective says he overheard then-Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey order a controversial mass arrest during a demonstration in downtown Washington seven years ago, according to attorneys for people taken into custody that day.

The August 6 Washington Post Editorial on the mass arrests of peaceful protestors in Washington, D.C. in 2002 echoes Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s “extraordinary rebuke” of D.C. government and police officials.