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Photo by Mike Rhodes

The City of Fresno has agreed to pay $2.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed after the city raided homeless encampments, destroying personal property.

The California Department of Transportation will chip in another $85,000, bringing the total to more than $2.3 million.

The settlement came after a federal judge ruled that Fresno violated the constitutional rights of homeless residents. The ruling was based on a series of 14 city raids on homeless encampments between February 2004 and August 2006 in which personal belongings were destroyed.

But the ruling left other issues undecided, and a jury trial was scheduled to begin next week.

Read the Fresno Bee report here. There are lots of previous posts on this, so search for "Fresno" in this blog to get the background.

Full post as published by the 13th juror on June 13, 2008 (boomark / email).