The damages sought were $1.8 million and Diana made it clear in every public statement she gave that the financial figure was not the point. The point was accountability and the point was making sure that the three complaints that had been filed before hers had not been filed in vain. The body cam footage was released to the media as part of the legal proceedings and the clip that spread fastest and widest was 32 seconds long. It showed Lily Holt looking up at Officer Dale Simmons with tears starting in her eyes and saying, "That's my daddy," in the clear, certain voice of a five-year-old who had no reason to say anything other than the truth. And it showed Simmons looking away from her and back at Reggie like she hadn't said a word.
That 32-second clip was watched over 40 million times in the first week after it was posted and the comment sections filled with parents from every background describing the same feeling watching it. The specific devastation of watching a child be ignored when she was telling a simple and obvious truth. Simmons was suspended with pay pending the conclusion of the internal investigation and the recommendation for termination was acted on within three days of the report being submitted. His 9-year career as a police officer ended with a personnel file that documented a pattern of racial profiling involving children and families, a termination for cause, and a viral body cam clip that attached his name to one of the most watched examples of racial bias in modern policing. The city settled the federal lawsuit for $1.8 million four months after Diana and Reggie filed it.
And the decision to settle came quickly because the city's legal team reviewed the body cam footage, the prior complaints, and the internal affairs report and reached the same conclusion that everyone who had seen the evidence had already reached. There was no version of this case that ended well for the city in a courtroom, and fighting it publicly would cost more in reputation and legal fees than settling quietly. The settlement included monetary compensation for Reggie and Lily and a formal acknowledgement that Simmons had acted without legal justification and that the department's failure to act on prior complaints had enabled the incident to occur. Reggie and Diana donated $400,000 of the settlement to organizations that provided legal support for interracial families who experienced discrimination and to a foundation that offered counseling services for children who had experienced trauma related to racially motivated police encounters. The remainder covered legal fees and compensated the family for what Lily had experienced on that bench in Riverside Park.
Lily attended therapy for several months after the incident, and her therapist worked with the family to help her process what she had seen and felt in age-appropriate ways. Children are resilient, but they are not untouched, and the image of her father in handcuffs was something that needed to be worked through