If you thought it was the end of the Alton Sterling bacchanal in Baton Rouge when the city-parish’s Metro Council planted a big wet $4.5 million kiss on the family of the career criminal shot by a Baton Rouge cop as he went for his gun amid a July 2016 scuffle, it turns out you were wrong.

Because the ginned-up Black Lives Matter protesters who descended on Baton Rouge in the wake of Sterling’s death and attempted to block interstate highways, and were rounded up by police for their trouble, filed a lawsuit alleging police brutality. It’s a suit which should have been fought tooth and nail.

But it wasn’t.

Forget about the fact that the “mostly-peaceful” protesters were throwing bottles and other projectiles at the police, which resulted in a couple of injuries. Lawsuits were filed by cops as a result of that, against the Black Lives Matter organization which sparked those “mostly-peaceful” protests, but those got nowhere because apparently Black Lives Matter isn’t a real organization notwithstanding all the millions of dollars flowing into its coffers and financing lavish houses and other luxuries for its founders.

Yeah, forget about that.

And yesterday, 14 of the “mostly-peaceful” protesters who had filed that suit got a fat payday from the same Baton Rouge Metro Council which previously coughed up $4.5 million to Sterling’s family.

The East Baton Rouge Metro Council approved paying out $1.17 million to settle a lawsuit tied to the arrests of 14 protestors after the 2016 death of Alton Sterling.

That legal battle is playing out in federal court, and Wednesday’s special meeting was likely the last chance to settle matter outside the courtroom. The matter passed 7-4 with one councilmemer absent.

On July 10, 2016, people filled the streets of Baton Rouge following the death of Alton Sterling, who was shot by a Baton Rouge police officer. Protesters chanted in standoffs with police in riot gear, who told them not to block the streets. Officers eventually arrested more than 100 people.

“We were trying to get on the interstate. We had started at the Capitol and we were marching down the street, but the police blocked us here before we could get to the interstate,” Tommy Curtain told WBRZ that day. “We wanted to make the display and show exactly why we were together. We didn’t realize that, they just told us to go another direction.”

The end of the protests was just the beginning of a years-long legal battle. Several demonstrators sued the city-parish for what they say were wrongful arrests and excessive force.

In a 2016 interview recorded days after his arrest, Akeem Muhammad told WRKF, the Baton Rouge public radio station, that he marched with hundreds to the Capitol, and that there were no conflicts until police showed up.

The seven Metro Council members who voted to approve the settlement rather than let a jury decide the case were Cleve Dunn Jr., Denise Amoroso, Chauna Banks, Carolyn Coleman, Rowdy Gaudet, Darryl Hurst and Brandon Noel.

Damn shame.

Is this the last of the Alton Sterling crap Baton Rouge will have to tolerate? Or will there be more grifting and recompense demanded for a community whose law enforcement professionals defended themselves against aggressive criminals and revolutionaries?

It’s not like the criminals and revolutionaries didn’t have Gavin Long, a domestic terrorist from Texas, showing up to murder several law enforcement officers in a revenge killing for Sterling. That wasn’t enough. Their blood has now been supplemented with $5.7 million in giveaway cash.

If you’re a taxpayer in Baton Rouge that’s your money. You’re expected to pay and pay, until you finally give up and move away from this place. Which is what they want you to do. They’d rather have federal grant money, which is completely unaccountable, than revenue from local taxation which is directly tied to voters who expect it to be spent responsibly. The more taxpayers they can run off, the more they can shape an electorate full of Alton Sterlings and the “mostly-peaceful” protester types who produce nothing but reliable Democrat votes.

And never lose another election.

It’s disappointing that Noel, Amoroso and Gaudet, who are Republicans, would have surrendered to this. Baton Rouge needs to do better by its cops. As it stands, the city has become a shooting gallery ever since the Sterling case, and coughing up windfalls to the families and allies of criminals will only make things worse.