The District of Columbia has agreed to pay $13.7 million to settle a class action suit brought by protesters arrested during a demonstration in 2000, lawyers in the case announced at court Monday.
Lawyers for the protesters said it would be the largest amount ever paid in the U.S. to compensate protesters who were wrongfully arrested. The plaintiffs alleged that police officers detained nearly 700 people attending an April 15, 2000, march against “the prison industrial complex,” which was timed to overlap with an IMF/World Bank meeting. Many of those arrested were tied up for long periods of time, they said.
