The brutal suppression of Occupy Oakland by Oakland Police and Oakland's Government has now cost Oakland's taxpayers 7688 broken windows (at the official federal funds discount rate of $1000 per broken window). In other words, it would have taken more than two years of continuous window breaking (at 10 windows a day), to equal what Oakland has paid out in lawsuit settlements resulting from the crackdown - and that's not including legal fees Oakland paid to its lawyers, nor other staff time, nor court fees.
Today, January 13th, 2015, yet another settlement was announced. This time for the January 28th, 2012 illegal kettling and mass arrests that happened outside the YMCA on Broadway, the evening after the march to the vacant Kaiser Center and back. For $1,300,000.
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The 360 Occupy Oakland protesters who claim they were falsely arrested and subjected to unconstitutional jail conditions after a January 2012 protest have been granted class certification and a tentative settlement.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins on Jan. 5 gave the class preliminary approval for a settlement of more than $1.3 million.
Lead plaintiff Steven Angell complained that Oakland's police officers "corralled and trapped" the protesters in front of the Oakland YMCA on Broadway, where they were "pushed, clubbed and driven into a shrinking space."
Other settlements have included: Scott Campbell et all, $1.17M, Scott Olsen, $4.5M, Kayvan Sabeghi, $600K, Robert Ovetz, $48K, and Joanne Warwick, $25K. There is at least one outstanding case having to do with May Day, 2012.
Perhaps the most ironic - and overlooked - piece of this whole absurdity is that not a single window had been broken before the police became massively violent. On October 25th, 2011, the Oakland Police beat, tear-gassed and terrorized the sleeping denizens of Occupy Oakland at Oscar Grant Plaza, then that same evening shot a bean-bag round into Scott Olsen's skull. It was only afterwards that windows mysteriously began to crack and fall in pieces onto the sidewalk.