The city of Seattle, Washington will pay rioters who demonstrated in the name of “Black Lives Matter” $10 million to settle a lawsuit over allegations of excessive force from more than four dozen plaintiffs.
The deal was announced Wednesday with no admission of wrongdoing from the city as part of the settlement related to mass demonstrations in 2020.
“This decision was the best financial decision for the City considering risk, cost, and insurance,” said City Attorney Ann Davison in a press release. “The case has been a significant drain on the time and resources of the City and would have continued to be so through an estimated three-month trial that was scheduled to begin in May.”
Demonstrators filed the lawsuit in September 2020 involving more than a million documents, over 10,000 videos, and “hundreds of interactions between the plaintiffs and law enforcement officers.”
“This settlement resolves the majority of the remaining claims arising out of the 2020 demonstration period and is a big step toward allowing the City to focus on the important work of today, while moving forward from events four years ago,” Davison said.
The far-left city of Seattle became a hotspot for the politically charged riots in 2020 when violent demonstrations erupted in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. According to the Associated Press, demonstrators were hit with crowd control devices the city council had previously banned.
“Among the plaintiffs in the [lawsuit] was Aubreanna Inda, who was standing in the middle of a street before a
