The New York City Police Department has reached a settlement in a lawsuit that will result in the banning of the protest enforcement tactic known as "kettling."
This tactic, which was used during the 2020 George Floyd unrest, involves surrounding a crowd in order to control it. Critics argue that kettling often leads to the trapping of lawful protesters and innocent bystanders.
The settlement was reached in a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Legal Aid Society, and the New York Civil Liberties Union. It describes kettling as the enclosure of targeted individuals without probable cause to detain them. If implemented faithfully by the NYPD, this settlement will ensure that protesters are never again subjected to indiscriminate violence and retaliatory over-policing, as witnessed during the summer of 2020.
According to Legal Aid attorney Corey Stoughton, "Today's settlement represents a novel approach to policing protests that, if implemented faithfully by the NYPD, will ensure that protesters are never again met with the sort of indiscriminate violence and retaliatory over-policing New York saw in the summer of 2020."
While the settlement has been welcomed by advocates for civil liberties, some commenters on the Reuters story published by Yahoo News expressed dissatisfaction with the decision to scale back police efforts to control protests.
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