South Pasadena will pay $500,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by Black Lives Matter protesters who alleged the Police Department failed to protect them against attacks by white supremacists during a series of protests in 2020.
Fahren James, the founder of Black Lives Matter South Pasadena, and Victoria Patterson, a Black Lives Matter supporter who has lived in the city for nearly 30 years, filed the lawsuit in 2021, alleging they were spat on, struck with rocks and, in one instance, nearly hit by a truck.
But they said South Pasadena police refused to take action against their assailants in all but one of the attacks and never properly classified any of them as “hate crimes,” according to an amended complaint in the case.
“I am an African American woman who was the victim of multiple hate crimes, but SPPD treated me as less than human, particularly when they sided with my White attackers, leaving them free to attack me again and again,” James said in an October 2021 statement announcing the filing of the case.
The department’s failure to arrest or cite individuals accused of assaulting the protesters “emboldened their attackers and left them in grave danger,” according to the lawsuit.
The city investigated and sustained 21 complaints against officers, according to a prior statement by attorney Laboni Hoq. The investigation found that officers had failed to follow the rules for reporting hate crimes, had not taken detailed and accurate reports, were hostile and dismissive to those reporting the crimes, and had turned off their body cameras improperly.
The city blamed the poor policing on a lack of training and assigned the officers to receive additional instruction on the “policies and procedures in place regarding hate crimes,” a spokesperson said in August 2021.
“After months of complaints by Plaintiffs and community members, the City finally investigated them and found that over half the police force had violated SPPD’s Hate…
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