Following a spring, summer and fall of Black Lives Matter riots on the streets of Seattle, a federal judge has ruled that the city must pay $81,997.12 to lawyers for Black Lives Matter to cover their fees and costs in pursuing contempt-of-court violations against police use of crowd control devices.
The judge ruled on Thursday that rather than using less-lethal weapons against entire mobs of demonstrators, police should have made sure they were only used against those in the crowd who were looting or vandalizing property, according to The Seattle Times.
BLM's lawyers originally sought $263,708.50 and claimed they spent almost 500 hours preparing their motions and briefs. The contempt violations were originally issued for the improper use of foam-tipped projectiles, blast balls, pepper spray or any other less-lethal weapons by the Seattle Police Department against the rioters.
BLM claimed they were "peaceful protesters" but over 1,000 officers were injured during the course of the protests and riots which also resulted in millions of dollars of property damage in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.
US District Court Judge Richard Jones issued an order last summer temporarily prohibiting the Seattle Police Department from using the crowd control devices at the height of the unrest.
Seattle attempted to get a larger reduction, arguing that BLM lawyers had only managed to convince the court that four out of the 122 disputed uses of the crowd control devices violated prior court orders.
The remaining 118 cases pursued by BLM were determined by the judge to either involve appropriate use of force by SPD, or lacked evidence to make a decision in favor of either side.
Judge Jones wrote in his ruling, "Plaintiffs' success was indeed narrow. But to bring this motion, plaintiffs were required to parse complex and dynamic protests, during which hundreds of protestors and dozens of police officers exchanged countless projectiles."
He added, "To obtain their success, plaintiffs inevitably had to review all deployments and should not be penalized for doing so."
Jones did not issue the "coercive sanctions" against the city, which would have required SPD provide BLM with use-of-force reports within days of every incident where an officer used force against a protester.
Judge Jones also rejected the city's requests to submit more evidence and have the court reconsider its December order, which found the city and its police department in contempt for inappropriate use of crowd control weapons.
"Should the court, out of fairness, allow plaintiffs to obtain the evidence it seeks, these proceedings would be endless," Jones wrote.
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