The lawsuit is the second to be resolved that alleged police officers beat Black Chicagoans attempting to flee the Northwest Side’s Brickyard Mall as looters began to ransack the mall after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.

In the latest case to be settled, the City Council voted 28-16 to pay $875,000 to 21 people who each say they were brutalized by Chicago police officers during the 2020 protests.

A week after Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis, her family hired the Chicago-based law firm that also represented George Floyd’s family to conduct a civil investigation.

So far, Chicago taxpayers have paid approximately $11.9 million to settle and defend lawsuits sparked by the conduct of CPD officers during protests that swept the city in 2020 and erupted into unrest, according to court records.

Chicago taxpayers paid $6.3 million to settle 54 lawsuits, according to a WTTW analysis of city records. An additional $4.5 million went to pay private lawyers to defend the conduct of CPD officers named in those lawsuits.

In 2020, after a summer of protests rocked U.S. cities, the words “Black Lives Matter” went from the rallying cry of racial justice demonstrators to words lining the very roads along which they marched.

Dozens and dozens of companies are dropping diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives they loudly launched five years ago.

Nationwide protests erupted in the summer of 2020, a so-called racial reckoning, shortly after a video of the killing surfaced online. Residents took to the streets demanding systemic change to policing and the prison system.

In all, Chicago taxpayers have spent at least $6.8 million to defend and settle lawsuits alleging Chicago police officers committed a wide range of misconduct during the protests and unrest during the summer of 2020, according to an analysis by WTTW News.

Nearly $2 million of that toll went to pay private lawyers to defend the conduct of CPD officers from late May until mid-August 2020, one of the most tumultuous periods in Chicago history, according to records obtained by WTTW News.

Former Chicago Police Sgt. Cassandra Williams, who worked for the Chicago Police Department for 32 years, said she faced severe harassment and retaliation for filing a complaint against her commanding officer, Lt. Jason Brown, who remains on the force. “I crossed the blue line,” Williams said.

The two employees, a manager and a supervisor, “incompetently performed the duties of their positions” on May 30, 2020, when they cited the leaders of the Chicago Freedom School, according to a report released Friday by the city’s watchdog.

Chicago Police Board President Ghian Foreman told investigators he was struck by an officer after Foreman attempted to intervene after seeing several police officers “just whaling away on” a man with their batons, records show.

George Floyd’s death reignited a movement for civil rights and calls for police to be held accountable. Since then, several states, including Minnesota and Illinois, have passed police reform legislation.

Activists planned the vigil, along with a rally at the governor’s residence in St. Paul, for the two-year anniversary of Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, which ignited protests in Minneapolis and around the world as bystander video quickly spread.

The decision reflects Biden’s struggle to use the limited powers of his office to advance his campaign promises, as well as his attempt to strike a balance between police and civil rights groups at a time when rising concerns about crime are eclipsing calls for reform.