The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office agreed to pay $100,000 and to limit its future tactics to settle a lawsuit brought by protesters who argued their May 31 arrests were illegal and violent.
Although the Sheriff's Office didn't concede it broke the law or did anything wrong, the settlement gives $10,000 to each of the four plaintiffs and $60,000 in attorneys' fees, according to WJCT News partner The Florida Times-Union.
The Sheriff's Office also agreed to three limitations on how it handles protests:
• Officers can't order protesters to disperse unless there's "a well-grounded fear of a breach of the peace in the form of imminent violence, a threat to public safety or impairment of traffic."
• Officers can't arrest protesters for failure to comply without first specifying what area they have to disperse from and notifying everyone they must disperse and what the consequences would be if they don't. Officers also must point out where protesters should walk in order to disperse and provide enough time to let them do so.
• Officers can't use chemical agents or irritants unless alternative crowd control methods are ineffective and the use of those agents is the "most reasonable alternative" to address a threat.
Read the rest of this story at Jacksonville.com.
