Atlanta City Council agrees to $2M settlement for students arrested during protest
ATLANTA - The Atlanta City Council, in a 13-1 vote, has approved a $2 million settlement for two university students who were arrested in 2020 during a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Atlanta.
The arrests of the students, who were attending Morehouse College and Spelman College, grabbed national headlines and led to the arrest of six police officers.
Body camera video obtained by FOX 5 showed Atlanta police officers pulling the two students out of their car and using a Taser, just after a curfew had been imposed on May 30, 2020, as protests spread in Atlanta. Throughout the incident, the couple could be heard screaming and asking officers what was happening.
Officers said the two students, Messiah Young and Taniyah Pilgrim, did not comply with their orders.
According to the attorneys for both students, Pilgrim was forced to the ground and handcuffed, after which she was left for hours in a police van. Attorneys say Young was punched repeatedly and suffered a cut to his arm that required over a dozen stitches.
Speaking at a press conference on June 17, 2021, Young emotionally said that the videos of the arrest of him and other Black men across the country were a "constant reminder" of the night.
"A huge part of my life was diminished and … trying to move forward from this point is very, very irritating and very, very triggering," he said. "You would think there would be some kind of reform and change at this point. Every day I'm reminded of something from that night."
"There seems to be a never-ending cycle of these," Young continued before becoming emotional.
The lawsuit named the city of Atlanta, former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, former Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant and nine police officers connected to the arrests.
Harold Spence, an attorney for the students, called the lawsuit an "accountability action."
Spence claimed that the action against Young and Pilgrim happened because Young was filing an Atlanta police officer's "mistreatment of another citizen," saying that Young's arrest was "retaliation."
The lawsuit names the city and Bottoms because attorneys argue the mayor's executive order declaring a curfew, which was put into place hours before the incident, was "overbroad and Constitutionally unenforceable."
The attorneys also claimed that the Atlanta Police Department had not done enough to stop actions like those that happened to the students from happening.
"No officer intervened that night. In fact, they became part of the maniacal feeding frenzy," Spence said.
Six Atlanta police officers have been charged in connection with the incident. Two officers, Ivory Streeter and Mark Gardner, were fired during a Zoom call the next day with the mayor, former Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields, and the city lawyer.
In February 2021, the City of Atlanta Civil Service Board reversed the terminations, saying it found numerous violations of city policies and ordinances that led to a violation of the two officers' due process rights.
The board found several steps were missing despite COVID-19 protocols being put into place. Among those steps were giving written notice with a "sufficient written description" of the incident and suspension prior to termination to allow for the officers to respond.