ST. LOUIS - The city of Moberly, Mo., has agreed to pay $2.4 million to the family of Stanley Harlan, 23, who died during a 2008 drunken driving arrest.

Harlan's family sued the city and Moberly police Officers Jeremy Baird and Carmen Newbrough last September in federal court in St. Louis, claiming that police used a Taser on him twice, then kicked and choked him.

The suit says police also refused to allow Harlan's mother or other bystanders to help him when he stopped breathing.

In legal filings, the city said Baird used the Taser "due to Mr. Harlan's actions." But they denied the other allegations and said that officers did not know that Harlan was unarmed at the time the Taser was used.

In the settlement, the city agreed to a freeze on Taser use, a lawyer for the family said.

City representatives did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment. They appeared briefly in court Monday to ask for a judge's approval of the settlement.

Harlan died of cardiopulmonary arrest, said lawyer Tyler Breed, who represented the dead man's mother and son.

Howard County Prosecutor Mason Gebhardt, who was appointed as a special prosecutor in the case, told the Post-Dispatch on Monday that he had reviewed a thick binder of reports prepared by state investigators, and the dashboard video from a police car, and decided in January not to file charges.

Gebhardt's report says police were not criminally negligent and that Harlan was intoxicated. It said Harlan struggled as police tried to handcuff him. The action then moved off-camera before the Taser was used. Gebhardt said witness statements and the video do not reflect that police kicked or choked Harlan.

"I am no way endorsing police conduct. I'm simply saying it did not rise to criminal conduct," he said.

Moberly is about 120 miles northwest of St. Louis.