By Ben Fractenberg
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The city settled a lawsuit brought by five Critical Mass cyclists on Tuesday, agreeing to pay them nearly one hundred thousand dollars, several news outlets reported.
The cyclists claimed that they were wrongfully detained and arrested during the March 2007 ride and, in one case, assaulted by police.
In a video posted to YouTube a police sergeant, Timothy Horohoe, is seen pushing rider Richard Vazquez, 55, off his bike.
“While I’m pleased with the monetary victory for myself and the other plaintiffs, there will be no real justice until the higher-ups in the NYPD are held accountable for their actions, and it is not just the low ranking officers who are punished,” Vazquez said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department told The New York Times the city saw the case as about an individual incident and not the treatment of Critical Mass because the arrest “had nothing to do with the fact that the large group of bikers was riding together, but rather the unique behavior of each individual arrested.” The department said Vazquez was arrested after he ran a red light in Times Square.
The environmental action group Time's Up released an audio recording of Horohoe allegedly lying about the incident to a Civilian Complaint Review Board.
“The NYPD has been harassing the ride since 2004,” Time’s Up spokeswoman Barbara Ross told The New York Times. “The settlement shows that the concerns that we’ve had over the years are validated.”
