{"id":78313,"date":"2025-12-22T19:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T19:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/78313\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T19:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T19:47:09","slug":"nyc-ordered-to-pay-2-5m-to-george-floyd-protestor-in-excessive-force-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/78313\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC ordered to pay $2.5M to George Floyd protestor in excessive force lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal jury has awarded<\/a> $2.56 million to a protestor who says she was left brain damaged after NYPD cops slammed her head to the pavement during a 2020 Black Lives Matter George Floyd demonstration in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

Before talking to the streets on June 3, 2020, Brigid Pierce, then 37, held a director of marketing job, had written eight unpublished novels, including the \u201cfirst-ever second-person lesbian zombie romance,\u201d and was engaged to be married to her girlfriend, her lawyer said.<\/p>\n

That changed after NYPD officers threw her to the ground during a protest at the Barclays Center at the height of the mass demonstrations<\/a> sparked by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Pierce suffered permanent brain damage that affects her vision and her ability to focus, causes migraines and numbness and will likely result in early dementia, her attorney said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Brigid who wrote novels, ran marathons, performed aerial circus all the time \u2014 that person\u2019s gone,\u201d her lawyer, Ilann Maazel of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, told the Brooklyn Federal Court jury in his closing argument. \u201cBrigid\u2019s low energy, she gets confused, forgets things.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, following a two-week trial, the jury found the city liable for assault and battery against Pierce.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very, very relieved to have a victory. It\u2019s not something that\u2019s normal to be able to take on the NYPD<\/a> in the city of New York and it feels a little bit of a kind of David vs. Goliath situation,\u201d Pierce told the Daily News Sunday \u201cI\u2019ve been dealing with this brain injury and the fallout in my life for five and a half years now so this verdict is a really, really long time in coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

They did determine that one or more \u201cJohn Doe\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile 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,\u201d said Nick Paolucci, a city Law Department spokesman. \u201cWe are evaluating next steps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryder, now a detective specialist assigned to the NYPD\u2019s press office, testified that Pierce grabbed his shield \u201cand that\u2019s when I decided to affect the arrest.\u201d He said Pierce kicked her after he brought her down and she was \u201cactively resisting\u201d arrest.<\/p>\n

After she was zip-tied, Ryder tried to talk with her as he led her away. \u201cI was trying to tell her that what happened to George Floyd was unequivocally murder and that I was very happy (Derek Chauvin) was arrested,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The NYPD declined to comment on the verdict.<\/p>\n

\"Police<\/p>\n

Court evidence<\/p>\n

Police body camera footage shows Brigid Pierce being arrested at a protest on June 3, 2020. (Court evidence)<\/p>\n

Maazel argued at trial\u00a0 that Ryder, at 6-foot-2, towered over the 5-foot-5 135-pound Pierce.\u00a0Another officer pushed a protestor to Pierce\u2019s right with his riot shield so Pierce, her phone out, yelled, \u201cI\u2019m watching you, I\u2019m f\u2014ing livestreaming\u201d \u2014 and that\u2019s when Ryder grabbed her and threw her to the ground without warning, and without an order to disperse, according to her civil lawsuit.<\/a><\/p>\n

A group of officers pinned her to the ground after that and one of them \u2014 she never learned who \u2014 \u201cground her head into the concrete,\u201d Maazel told jurors at the trial\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that this was a very horrifying moment that I was going through,\u201d Pierce told The News. \u201cI had no idea as it was happening that this was going to change the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\"Brigid<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Ilann Maazel<\/p>\n

Brigid Pierce was arrested at a protest in Brooklyn on June 3, 2020. (Courtesy of Ilann Maazel)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tragic irony of this case is that Brigid was protesting police violence, and at that very protest she as brutalized by the police,\u201d Maazel told The News. \u201cFor doing nothing more than protesting, the NYPD changed her entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The jury awarded her $553,000 for pain and suffering, $946,000 for past and future loss of income, $763,000 for life care costs and $302,900 for compensatory damages for negligent denial of medical care.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

floyd protest<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/p>\n

Gardiner Anderson for New York Daily News<\/p>\n

Black Lives Matter demonstrators march on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn on June 4, 2020. (Gardiner Anderson for New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s lawyers argued at trial that Pierce was exaggerating her condition, with attorney Jonathan Hutchinson telling the jury that she initially didn\u2019t complain of any serious head injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this information changes after she decides to sue and she starts to craft her narrative,\u201d he said. \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hutchinson also portrayed her career change as her lifelong dream.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody is forced to become a luthier,\u201d he told the jury. \u201cThe fact that plaintiff is claiming that she had to leave her job to move to France because of these officers \u2014 France, where her fianc\u00e9 lived, where the best lutherie school in the world is located \u2014 shows you just how much they are willing to bend the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pierce said she wasn\u2019t particularly fazed by that argument, noting that she was going back to vocational school in her 30s and 40s. \u201cFor them to pretend that that was something that I did for pleasure is just so ridiculous to me that it didn\u2019t even feel hurtful to be accused of that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal jury has awarded $2.56 million to a protestor who says she was left brain damaged after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[98,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,11,10,12,261,265],"class_list":["post-78313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-brooklyn","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}