Austin City Council voted Thursday to approve more than $2.1 million for restitution for two victims injured by police during the racial justice protests in 2020. The city has now paid out more than $22 million in lawsuits surrounding police conduct from that time.
Dozens of protesters were shot with so-called "less-lethal" ammunition during the May 2020 racial justice protests. Many were severely injured. Some demonstrators sustained lasting brain trauma, while others had to have the ammunition surgically removed by trauma surgeons at Ascension Seton.
The weapons used to control thousands of protesters in downtown Austin included foam-tipped ammunition and shells filled with lead-pellet bags fired from shotguns. An internal investigation found that APD knew the ammunition was potentially harmful ahead of the protests.
Alyssa Sanders and Ge'Micah Volter-Jones filed federal lawsuits following the protests and are the latest Austinites to reach a deal with the city. Sanders was shot with a 40-millimeter foam round in the head, while Volter-Jones sustained injuries from a beanbag round fired from a shotgun at his arm. Volter-Jones was awarded $150,000 and Sanders was awarded $1.95 million.
So far, the city has paid out 19 settlements in response to lawsuits filed against the Austin Police Department stemming from its response to the protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the fatal police shooting of Mike Ramos by Austin police. Eleven other lawsuits are yet to be settled.
Attorney Jeff Edwards has represented demonstrators who were severely injured over those protests. He said the lawsuits may compensate victims, but they also have an effect of exonerating officers because many were not disciplined for severely injuring protesters.
"The city paid more than $20 million in settlements because of their outrageous and unreasonable conduct," Edwards told KUT ahead of the vote. "At some point, you know, the leadership needs to step in and teach the officers how to do their jobs better."
Travis County District Attorney José Garza indicted 19 officers for excessive force in 2022, but the vast majority of those charges were dropped after an agreement between the city and the county prosecutor to ask the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate police conduct over that weekend in May 2020.
