The city has agreed to pay more than $350,000 to settle three lawsuits brought by Occupy Wall Street protesters who claimed electronic equipment, bikes and thousands of books seized by police were either damaged or never returned.
The biggest winner in the deal was civil-rights lawyer Normal Siegel, who collected $186,349 in legal fees, sources said.
Twenty-six truckloads of material were carted off after cops raided Zuccotti Park on Nov. 15, 2011, and ended a two-month sit-in that drew worldwide attention.
Among the items, according to one federal suit, were 3,600 books that were part of the “People’s Library.”
About 1,000 books were recovered from the Sanitation Department. But 200 were so severely damaged that they had to be tossed, the lawsuit said.
The protesters sued for $47,000, and that’s what they got.
In a second lawsuit, the city paid $75,000 to Global Revolution Television for broken electronic equipment and $49,850 in lawyer’s fees to Wylie Stecklow.
In a third suit, the Time’s Up bike group collected $8,500 for bicycles that were damaged. The group’s lawyer, Samuel B. Cohen, received no fee.