ANTIOCH -- Antioch agreed to pay $360,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by a group of African American renters who said police targeted them for special patrols and pressured landlords to evict them from federally subsidized Section 8 housing, the city said Wednesday.

The renters, who filed suit in 2008 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, said city officials had reacted to a near-doubling of the black population in five years by forming a police squad known as the Community Action Team, which searched their homes illegally and warned landlords they could be held responsible for tenants' misconduct.