Minneapolis pays $275k to man beaten, choked by cop during riot
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The Minneapolis City Council on Thursday approved a $275,000 settlement for a man whom a police officer allegedly punched and choked in 2020. While the payout to Asante Simmons pales in comparison to those in other police misconduct cases, it pushes the total taxpayer outlay since 2006 above $94 million.
Simmons, 30, was part of a group of people looting a Foot Locker during a riot in downtown Minneapolis on Aug. 26, 2020. The chaos, three months after police killed George Floyd, started when a false rumor spread that police had fatally shot a man on Nicollet Mall. In reality, the man, who’d been suspected in a homicide earlier that day, took his own life as officers approached him.
Soon people swarmed into downtown and started looting businesses. Several broke into Target’s headquarters and set a fire inside.
On surveillance video, Simmons can be seen running with a shoe box under his left arm. Officer Alexander V. Brown follows close behind and corners Simmons in a hallway outside the store.
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Simmons tries to get away, but Brown hits him in the back of his head with a nightstick, knocks him to the ground, then repeatedly punches him. Brown then puts Simmons in a chokehold and pins him to the floor with his knee as he puts on handcuffs.
Soon after Floyd’s murder, MPD changed its policy to prohibit neck restraints and chokeholds. Jordan Kushner, Simmons’ attorney, said in a phone interview with MPR News on Thursday that Brown’s actions were egregious, not least because they came on the heels of Floyd’s murder and the policy change.
“He was engaging in the same sort of excessive force that had killed George Floyd, and here he was doing it again as if nothing had happened,” Kushner said.
Two days after Simmons’ arrest, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged him with burglary and assaulting a police officer. Prosecutors alleged in the criminal complaint that Simmons “turned on the officer, charged at him, and knocked him to the ground” then hit the officer in the head.
Kushner said this account, which prosecutors got from police, is false. Kushner, who subpoenaed the surveillance video from the store, noted that it shows Simmons trying to run away but he is not seen attacking Brown. Prosecutors dropped the charges after Kushner sent them the video.
Brown, who was never charged, left the Minneapolis Police Department in 2021. Like dozens of other officers, Brown filed a workers compensation claim. The council signed off on his $175,000 settlement in November of 2021.
Two years before that, the MPD fired Brown for a 2016 incident in which he allegedly punched a handcuffed suspect in the face. After Brown and the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis sued, the city agreed to reinstate him and impose a two-week unpaid suspension. It’s not uncommon for police officers fired for misconduct to get their jobs back through the arbitration process.
Including Simmons’ settlement, Minneapolis taxpayers have shelled out more than $94 million since 2006 to resolve excessive force claims, according to a city tally. The largest was the $27 million paid to George Floyd’s family. The family of Justine Ruszczyk, whom an officer fatally shot in an alley in 2017, received $20 million.
In 2023 the city paid $7.5 million to John Pope and $1.4 million to Zoya Code, who each alleged excessive force by former Officer Derek Chauvin during separate incidents in 2017 – three years before he killed George Floyd.