New York City to Pay $2.5 Million Settlement in Excessive Force Case Involving George Floyd Protestor

A federal jury has decided to award $2.56 million to a protestor who claims she sustained brain damage after NYPD officers allegedly forced her head onto the pavement during a Black Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn in 2020. The demonstration was in response to George Floyd’s death.

Before the incident on June 3, 2020, Brigid Pierce, aged 37 at the time, was a marketing director, the author of eight unpublished novels — including a unique “second-person lesbian zombie romance” — and was planning her wedding to her girlfriend, according to her attorney.

The dramatic turn of events occurred when police allegedly knocked her down at a protest outside the Barclays Center amid widespread demonstrations triggered by George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis. As a result, Pierce sustained lasting brain damage that now impairs her vision, concentration, and causes migraines and numbness. Her lawyer also notes that she faces a heightened risk of early-onset dementia.

“The Brigid who once penned novels, completed marathons, and dazzled in aerial circus acts is no longer,” her lawyer, Ilann Maazel of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, shared with the jury during closing arguments at the Brooklyn Federal Court. “Now, Brigid exhibits low energy, confusion, and memory loss.”

After a two-week trial, the jury concluded on Thursday that the city was responsible for the assault and battery against Pierce.

“I feel immense relief with this victory. Challenging the NYPD in New York City is not commonplace, and it feels akin to a David vs. Goliath battle,” Pierce expressed to the Daily News on Sunday. “I’ve been grappling with this brain injury and its repercussions for over five years, so this verdict has been a long-awaited resolution.”

The jury found one officer, Joseph Ryder, who Pierce says started the violent encounter when he knocked her down after she started filming police, liable for neglecting to get her medical treatment. But the jury did not find Ryder himself used excessive force, failed to intervene in the excessive force of other officers, assaulted Pierce, falsely arrested her or violated her First Amendment rights.

They did determine that one or more “John Doe” officers assaulted her. Footage shown at the trial shows several officers, not named in the lawsuit, holding her to the ground and forcing her head to the pavement.

“While we believe the verdict was incorrect we are pleased the jury recognized the plaintiff was not falsely arrested and her First Amendment rights were not violated,” said Nick Paolucci, a city Law Department spokesman. “We are evaluating next steps.”

Ryder, now a detective specialist assigned to the NYPD’s press office, testified that Pierce grabbed his shield “and that’s when I decided to affect the arrest.” He said Pierce kicked her after he brought her down and she was “actively resisting” arrest.

After she was zip-tied, Ryder tried to talk with her as he led her away. “I was trying to tell her that what happened to George Floyd was unequivocally murder and that I was very happy (Derek Chauvin) was arrested,” he said.

The NYPD declined to comment on the verdict.

Maazel argued at trial  that Ryder, at 6-foot-2, towered over the 5-foot-5 135-pound Pierce. Another officer pushed a protestor to Pierce’s right with his riot shield so Pierce, her phone out, yelled, “I’m watching you, I’m f—ing livestreaming” — and that’s when Ryder grabbed her and threw her to the ground without warning, and without an order to disperse, according to her civil lawsuit.

A group of officers pinned her to the ground after that and one of them — she never learned who — “ground her head into the concrete,” Maazel told jurors at the trial’s start. The officers ziptied her hands and corralled her into a city bus with other protestors, keeping her there for hours despite a bleeding head wound and her requests for medical attention, Maazel said.

“I thought that this was a very horrifying moment that I was going through,” Pierce told The News. “I had no idea as it was happening that this was going to change the rest of my life.”

Her injuries cost her her career, she said. She lost her job as a director of marketing for a music and arts organization because she couldn’t focus on task management or look at a screen for an extended period of time. Her marriage fell apart. She wound up moving to France and studying to become a luthier, repairing violins for a living.

“The tragic irony of this case is that Brigid was protesting police violence and at the very protest, and at that very protest she as brutalized by the police,” Maazel told The News. “For doing nothing more than protesting, the NYPD changed her entire life.”

The jury awared her $553,000 for pain and suffering, $946,000 for past and future loss of income and $763,000 for life care costs.

The city’s lawyers argued at trial that Pierce was exaggerating her condition, with attorney Jonathan Hutchinson telling the jury that she initially didn’t complain of any serious head injury.

“All this information changes after she decides to sue and she starts to craft her narrative,” he said. “You watched her testify for three days. Ask yourselves, did you see a person crippled by anxiety or cognitive decline? No. You saw a person who is sharp, articulate, total command of the facts, correcting me on my French pronunciation, deservedly.”

Hutchinson also portrayed her career change as her lifelong dream.

“Nobody is forced to become a luthier,” he told the jury. “The fact that plaintiff is claiming that she had to leave her job to move to France because of these officers — France, where her fiancé lived, where the best lutherie school in the world is located — shows you just how much they are willing to bend the truth.”

Pierce said she wasn’t particularly fazed by that argument, noting that she was going back to vocational school in her 30s and 40s. “For them to pretend that that was something that I did for pleasure is just so ridiculous to me that it didn’t even feel hurtful to be accused of that,” she said.