The City of Oakland and Alameda County have reached a settlement with 360 Occupy Oakland protestors who claim they were unfairly arrested and kept in deplorable conditions following mass protests three year ago.
The city and county will now doll out $1.3 million to the plaintiffs, including $350,000 for their attorneys. The settlement—tentatively approved by a federal magistrate last week—stems from a violent demonstration which occurred on January 28, 2012 outside a local Y.M.C.A. At the time, protestors were attempting to overrun the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center to use it as a command post. That same day, dozens of Occupy protestors broke into City Hall, damaging several items.
According to the lawsuit, the protestors were held in cold and overcrowded cells for 12 to 85 hours, but none of them were ever charged with a crime.
"OPD can't arrest everybody in a crowd just because they don't want (them) to march anymore," said Yolanda Huang, an attorney for the protesters. "You can only arrest someone if you see that they are committing a crime. That is the premise of our law."
This is the last in a series of lawsuits against the city related to the Occupy movement and brings total payouts to more than $7 million. As part of an earlier settlement, the city has already agreed to process and release peaceful demonstrators at the scene in the future instead of taking them to jail.
Read more about the latest settlement here.