The city of Los Angeles would pay nearly $13 million to immigration protesters and bystanders injured by Los Angeles police officers during a melee at MacArthur Park last year, according to sources familiar with a tentative settlement reached by both sides.
If approved, it would mark one of the largest payouts ever made to resolve LAPD misconduct. Further payouts are likely to journalists who also sued, charging that they were roughed up by the LAPD while covering the event.
A settlement in the case would go a long way toward closing an embarrassing and damaging chapter in the LAPD's recent history, department observers said. The proposed agreement still must be approved by the City Council, the mayor and the judge overseeing the claims against the city.
Longtime LAPD observer Merrick Bobb, executive director of the Police Assessment Resource Center, said a settlement, following the punishment of officers and changes in LAPD procedures, is a necessary last step for the department.
"It allows the LAPD . . . to move forward having learned its lessons and tied up the loose ends it opened," Bobb said.
Sources familiar with the deal declined to provide details and spoke on condition that their names not be used because the terms of the agreement were confidential pending the council's approval. Several of the sources, however, confirmed the size of the proposed deal at $12.85 million.
The council was scheduled to discuss the settlement in private Wednesday, but emerged without voting on whether to approve it. The council is expected to take up the matter again in the near future.
City Council members, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William J. Bratton all declined to comment. Representatives from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a major Latino advocacy group that has been involved in the settlement talks, also declined to comment.
Last year, as a May Day pro-immigration march was concluding in the park west of downtown, lines of police in riot gear moved in to clear the area. Reacting to what authorities described as a pocket of agitators throwing bottles and other objects, officers from the LAPD's elite Metro Division used batons and fired rubber bullets into the largely peaceful crowd. Hundreds of demonstrators and journalists and 18 officers suffered injuries. No one was killed.
