NEW YORK — The city has agreed to pay nearly $600,000 to settle allegations that police wrongfully arrested a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters, marking the largest settlement to date in a single Occupy-related civil rights case, the marchers’ lawyers said Tuesday.
The $583,000 pact involves 14 demonstrators who said police ordered them to leave but prevented them from doing so and arrested them in lower Manhattan early on New Year’s Day 2012. The disorderly conduct cases got dismissed, according to the protesters’ federal lawsuit, which argues that they were arrested ‘‘for expressing their views.’’
‘‘We were out there to send a message, and our rights were suppressed,’’ one of the demonstrators, Garrett O’Connor, said Tuesday. The 34-year-old labor activist said police tackled him to the ground as he tried to follow their order to clear out.
The city did not immediately comment. City lawyers had said in court papers last fall that the arrests were lawful and police ‘‘acted reasonably, properly, lawfully, and in good faith.’’
The march unfurled after a restive New Year’s Eve in Zuccotti Park, the lower Manhattan plaza where the people protesting economic inequality had set up camp from the previous September until the city rousted them that November. Some 68 people were arrested there on that New Year’s Eve when police said the protesters tore down barricades surrounding the park.
Shortly after midnight, some others set off to walk en masse to Manhattan’s East Village.
A city lawyer called the march ‘‘rowdy and tumultuous’’ at a court date last fall, according to a transcript. But the protesters’ lawsuit says they behaved peacefully and obeyed traffic laws, and police at times blocked traffic to let them cross streets safely together.
But then, in the East Village, officers boxed them in and made arrests, the suit says.
Police have made more than 2,600 arrests on various charges at Occupy-related events over time.