The Atlanta City Council has voted to settle for $2 million with two college students, Messiah Young and Taniyah Pilgrim, who were shocked with Tasers and pulled from their vehicle during the protests following George Floyd's death. The settlement aims to resolve a federal lawsuit the students filed in June 2021, where they argued that the police had no cause for using force or for pulling them out of the car, WABE reported. On Monday, the settlement was approved with a 13-1 vote by the council.
Young and Pilgrim, who attended historically Black colleges in Atlanta, found themselves in police confrontation amidst downtown traffic, caught up in the upheaval wrought by protests, an incident captured on video and widely shared on social media outlets, they were facing a calamity borne not from their creation but from a reckoning that had swept the nation. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Police Chief Erika Shields announced the firing of two officers and the relegation of three more to desk duty. Some reversals followed, as the Atlanta Civil Service Board later reinstated the two officers, citing non-compliance with procedural protocols, and the charges against all six officers involved were dropped by a special prosecutor in May 2022.
Despite agreeing to the settlement, the Atlanta City Council has made it clear that this does not constitute an admission of liability on the city's part. The release of body camera footage the night after the incident shed further light on the moments leading up to the use of Tasers and the detainment of both students, with law enforcement officials caught on tape yelling conflicting commands and alleging Young had a weapon, which was never retrieved according to the police reports.
