Witness video clips from eight different incidents of police brutality on the same May 30 date seem to prove that authorities involved in at least one of the incidents lied in official reports of what happened, according to a Washington Post investigation. Other officials were caught in apparent policy breaches highlighted when the Post evaluated slow-motion forms of witness video, traffic surveillance tapes, and other forms of video footage.
In the newspaper’s probe, reporters interviewed eight victims who were all partially blinded when police used “less lethal” weapons against them at George Floyd protests from California to Ohio.
Floyd, a Black man, died in Minneapolis police custody May 25 after a white cop kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes in an incident that inspired anti-police brutality protests throughout the nation.
Balin Brake, a 21-year-old resident of Fort Wayne, Ind., lost his right eye at one of the protests in downtown Fort Wayne when he was hit in the face with a police gas canister. Police accused Brake in a statement The Washington Post obtained of bending over “to pick up the canister to throw it back at officers. When he bent over another canister was deployed in the area and that canister skipped and hit the protester in the eye,” Fort Wayne police said. But video from the scene seemed to show that was a lie.
“Brake, who had been protesting peacefully with his hands up, turned and ran out of an intersection that police were trying to clear with gas,” Jon Swaine, a Washington Post reporter, said in a tweet Tuesday.
”Brake was hit directly in the face after turning back to face the police. He was not bending down or throwing anything at officers. The canister did not skip or bounce,” the journalist added in another tweet.
John Sanders, a 24-year-old amateur photographer, was partially blinded in Cleveland about 15 minutes after Brake was hit. Sanders told the Plain Dealer he had walked to the building to get photos of graffiti sprayed on it when two men he didn't know started throwing bricks, and officers responded by throwing canisters of chemical spray.
Although the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department told The Washington Post that deputies fire less-lethal rounds to “prevent breaches” at the Justice Center, video showed Sanders was walking away from the area when he was shot with a beanbag round.
He told the Plain Dealer that when he was hit, his face went numb. “I knew something was wrong because as soon as I got hit, I could no longer see out of my left eye,” he said. A Cleveland police officer reduced Sanders’ injury in a police report the Plain Dealer obtained to “a laceration to his left eye” that “was swollen.” Authorities also said Sanders refused to provide more information, but they expected him to be treated and released from the hospital.
The Post also interviewed Jax Feldmann and Russell Strong, who were injured in Denver; Leslie Furcron, in La Mesa, Calif.; Brandon Saenz, in Dallas; Sean Stearns, in Kansas City; and Linda Tirado, in Minneapolis. Tirado, a freelance photographer, is one of many victims named in a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota filed against Minneapolis police on behalf of journalists.
“When law enforcement officers target members of the press with impunity, they strike at the root of our democracy,” the ACLU of Minnesota said in a news release. “Law enforcement officers who perpetrate these abuses must be held accountable for their actions to the fullest extent of the law.”
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