Minneapolis to pay $1.2M to people injured by police during George Floyd protests

Two civilians who got injured during the protests that ensued after the May 2020 death of George Floyd have reached a $1.2 million settlement with the City Council, The Associated Press reported.

The aforementioned sum will be paid out to Virgil Lee Jackson Jr. and Linda Tirado. And per Minnesota Public Radio, the city has so far agreed to pay $5.4 million as settlements for civil rights lawsuits linked to injuries the police caused in May 2020.

The two recent settlements were approved by the City Council on Thursday. Jackson, who is a St. Paul resident, will receive $645,000. In his lawsuit, Jackson claimed that a Minneapolis police officer with a Taser used the device’s “drive stun” mode to repeatedly shock him. He also alleged that the electrodes were directed and pushed onto his skin. The incident happened in a parking lot.

Tirado, on the other hand, reached a $600,000 settlement with the city, The Associated Press reported. The Nashville freelance photographer sustained a vision loss in her left eye after an officer discharged a rubber bullet as she was covering protests at a police station.

Floyd, 46, lost his life after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for over nine minutes despite the Black man repeatedly telling him that he couldn’t breathe. Floyd’s death sparked protests both within and outside the United States in what was a year of racial reckoning.

Chauvin received a 22 and half-year prison sentence after he was found guilty of murder and manslaughter.