Protest groups including Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles have asked a federal judge for a restraining order on the Los Angeles Police Department's use of batons and "rubber" bullets, citing serious injuries and arguing that the use of these weapons violates constitutional rights of protesters.
"The LAPD has used so-called rubber bullets and batons indiscriminately to disrupt and disperse protesters with many serious injuries resulting," attorney Paul Hoffman wrote on behalf of BLM and protesters. "The images of baton-wielding LAPD officers and protesters' injuries unacceptably increase the cost of public participation in these important exercises of First Amendment rights." The injunction is tied to the larger class-action suit filed by National Lawyers Guild, Black Lives Matter, and Los Angeles Community Action Network, which argues that the LAPD has been repeatedly "misapplying the law" to stop protests.
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The Los Angeles Times has data to back up the arguments made by the groups. It has found that "demonstrators suffered a range of injuries at the hands of the LAPD, from minor bruising from baton strikes and falls as police skirmish lines advanced, to serious injuries to their genitals and heads from foam and sponge bullets and beanbags being fired into crowds, sometimes from close range." Because the asshole cops aim at the genitals and the heads of protesters. "I have never seen so many shots fired to the head," said Carol Sobel, one of the attorneys, of the supposedly less-lethal bullets. "We need action by the court because our clients are under real threat by batons and projectiles as well as hours in handcuffs."
The lawsuit includes examples such as "a 'peaceful protester' being shot in the face with an LAPD 'rubber bullet' as she attempted to return to her car, fracturing her jaw. The suit notes that even bystanders were hit, including a man in a wheelchair who was struck in the back of the shoulder blade." Recent UCLA graduate Tina Crnko described in the documents filed by the group what happened when police attacked a protest group on May 30. She related that she was "struck in the left bicep and rib cage" and then "struck by a 'rubber bullet on the forehead above my right eye,' causing temporary deafness, profuse bleeding from her forehead and likely sustained permanent nerve damage on the top of her skull."
The "rubber bullets," by the way are often not always rubber, but instead metal with rubber tips or a rubber coating. The ACLU calls the use of them "less lethal force." They, along with bean bags and other projectiles, the ACLU has found "are capable of inflicting severe trauma, or even causing death, when fired at close range. The most likely injury to result from close-range use of impact projectiles is broken bones, but more serious injuries may occur if the projectile strikes the head, throat, or heart area." And again, the cops are aiming for people's heads in these protests, regularly.
Freelance reporter Linda Tirado was shot in the face and left blind in one eye when she was photographing a protest in Minneapolis. On May 31, KPCC/LAist reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez was shot in the throat with a rubber bullet while covering a protest in Long Beach, California. Protester LaToya Ratlieff was shot in the face in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, protest last Sunday.
If the injunction succeeds in Los Angeles, Black Lives Matter and protesters across the country should try to take it nationwide, because clearly these brutal tactics are endemic to the nation's police, not just the LAPD.