Black Lives Matter files lawsuit against Santa Monica police over last summer's rioting

A Black Lives Matter group is suing the Santa Monica police over their handling of rioting that occurred in the area at the height of last summer’s George Floyd demonstrations.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the Monday filing of the lawsuit submitted by the Los Angeles division of Black Lives Matter. This round of allegations against Santa Monica police are like the class action lawsuit BLM-LA submitted against the LAPD.

They’re seeking the same class-action status in the Santa Monica matter.

To back up their claims BLM-LA has accounts from several protesters. David Brown is said to have been arrested on the street, struck with batons, and had to sit it out in jail over a curfew violation. Brown was driven to Los Angeles and told not to re-enter Santa Monica.

But he actually lived there. He wasn’t from out of town. This usage of curfew orders by local authorities is one of the points of complaint cited to the court.

The former Santa Monica Police Chief Cynthia Renaud is named as a defendant, and she's on the record as previously saying that the police department was equipped to handle "protests and riotous activity," but "organized criminals" were a new element at play in the chaos that the cops were "not prepared" to contend with.

What that meant for the city in terms of damages from the rioting entails, per the recollection by LA Times:

"In Santa Monica, where the unrest largely occurred May 31, many boutiques and shops were burglarized. The city counted 178 incidents of nonresidential “looting,” 49 incidents of vandalism, 10 assaults on officers, 18 damaged police cars, 12 arsons, 17 aggravated assaults and nine burglaries associated with the unrest that day, among other crimes."

The suit claims constitutional rights were violated when they preemptively banned “peaceful assemblies, kettling the demonstrators, subjecting them to unlawful force, arresting and detaining them tightly handcuffed on buses for hours, without access to bathrooms, water, or food.”

BLM-LA's legal representation for the case is Carol Sobel, a Santa Monica-based activist who was staff attorney for two decades, serving the ACLU of Southern California. Sobel is also the lead on the LAPD lawsuit.