On Jan. 20, 2005, the night of George W. Bush's second inauguration, there were protests throughout D.C. Now, over a dozen of those protesters — some of them bystanders — who were arrested in an Adams Morgan alleyway are getting their records expunged, and the District is paying $250,000 to settle their lawsuit.

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About 70 people were arrested that day. In the aftermath, Adam Eidinger, a witness, wrote on an online message board:

I witnessed the long amount of time over 100 police took to process the 70+ people they rounded up. It was around 20 degrees that night and people were forced to stand handcuffed for as long as 4 hours with no gloves, some people dressed in nothing more than t shirts. The police even said to legal observers and those arrested that they were keeping people outside for that long to 'punish them.'

One plaintiff sought damages for injuries sustained when "a MPD officer sprayed pepper spray directly in his face at a range of about two feet while [he], in compliance with police orders, knelt unresisting with his hands on the ground," according to the class action lawsuit [pdf].

The 56 plaintiffs in the suit are dividing an award of $160,000, with the remaining money going to lawyers and to settle two individual assault claims [pdf]. These mishandled protests are really starting to cost the District.

[via NBC Washington]