Boston pays $850,000 to settle lawsuit that alleges protesters were beaten by police

Gayla Cawley, Boston Herald on Apr 28, 2026

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BOSTON — The City of Boston has agreed to pay $850,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by four protesters who allege they were beaten with wooden batons and pepper-sprayed by police during a 2020 George Floyd demonstration.

The settlement agreement was announced Tuesday by attorneys representing the protesters — Jasmine Huffman, Justin Ackers, Caitlyn Hall, and Benjamin Chambers-Maher — who filed suit against the city and three Boston police officers five years ago.

“What happened that night will always be with me, but I am grateful that I was able to bring these issues to federal court,” Huffman said in a statement. “I hope the outcome leads to meaningful reform within the Boston Police Department.”

The three police officers named as defendants in the lawsuit are Michael Burke, Edward Joseph Nolan, and Michael McManus.

The four protesters allege they were beaten and pepper-sprayed by the officers “while lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights on May 31, 2020,” according to the announcement from their attorneys.

Three of the protesters were allegedly beaten with wooden riot batons. Two were pepper-sprayed. Three out of four submitted video recordings of their assaults as evidence, their attorneys said, while emphasizing that none had committed nor were ever charged with a crime in connection with the demonstration.

The protest at issue occurred in Boston after the murder of Floyd, a black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Officer Burke is alleged to have struck Ackers from behind, knocking him to the ground while the protester was attempting to leave the area. The incident was captured on Burke’s body camera, the lawsuit states.

Burke is also alleged to have struck Huffman just below the neck with a wooden riot baton, knocking her to the ground. He is alleged to have hit her with the weapon when she had her hands raised before an approaching line of police, the lawsuit states. The incident was captured on body camera footage.

Huffman’s attorneys said she had been recorded earlier in the day defending a police officer from possible violence, “putting her own body between the officer and a crowd of angry protesters,” but was assaulted later by police nonetheless, her attorneys wrote in the settlement announcement.

The lawsuit alleges Hall was beaten unconscious by Officer Nolan, who struck her face and chest with a wooden baton. The alleged assault came after Hall tried to intervene when Nolan was preparing to hit a young man beside her who was recording the chaos. The officer is then said to have turned on her instead.

Hall claims the assault occurred after she left the protest on the Common, and was stopped alongside other protesters by a “blockade” of police in Downtown Crossing, the lawsuit states.

Chambers-Maher, a disabled veteran, also claims to have been assaulted, this time by Officer McManus, when he was trying to leave the demonstration. He claims to have been walking towards his car in the North End when he was approached by officers on bicycles with their weapons drawn, the lawsuit states.

As Chambers-Maher was recording the officers, he was allegedly pepper-sprayed twice in his face by police. McManus then allegedly rammed his bicycle into Chambers-Maher’s legs, the lawsuit states.

“Our clients filed this lawsuit for the same reason they were on the Common that night in the first place: to stand up against police violence,” the protesters’ attorney Mark Loevy-Reyes said in a statement. “The message sent today is the same one they were sending that night: we all have a right to expect better of our law enforcement officers.”

The settlement agreement came nearly seven months after a federal judge ruled against the city’s motion to dismiss the case, allowing the lawsuit to proceed to trial.

“Our clients were moved by a strong sense of justice to protest police violence,” Howard Friedman, another of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said in a statement. “We are pleased that Boston saw the rightness of settling this lawsuit, and — as I have always hoped for in cases like these — that it will help lead to change and reform.”

The four protesters filed the case in 2021, alleging that the city’s policies, customs, and practices in handling protests were the moving force behind the three officers’ “excessive force” using riot batons and pepper spray.

Mayor Michelle Wu’s office and the Boston Police Department did not immediately respond to the Herald’s requests for comment.

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