A Black woman was trying to calm antagonized protesters when a Florida cop shot her in the face with a rubber bullet last month at a protest over the death of George Floyd, according to the Miami Herald. Now that woman, LaToya Ratlieff, will have a chance to share her story for legislators Monday morning, the newspaper reported. Ratlieff was asked to speak during a House subcommittee’s remote briefing on “how the violent treatment of protestors and journalists across the country by federal and local law enforcement have violated the First Amendment,” according to a news release. Linda Tirado, a freelance photographer who was blinded in her left eye when an officer hit her with a rubber bullet at a Minneapolis protest, is also scheduled to speak.
Ratlieff told the Miami Herald she is grateful for the opportunity to share her story. She suffered a fractured eye socket and had to get 20 stitches for another wound after a Fort Lauderdale police officer aiming at a man 10 feet behind her hit Ratlieff May 31. Officers were responding to a peaceful march, the newspaper reported.
“They had their vests on. They had their shields. It’s like they were prepared for war,” Ratlieff told the newspaper, “so I couldn’t get a good look at them.”
The situation didn’t escalate to violence until an officer shoved a kneeling woman in the head as many were heading to their cars. Protesters responded by throwing rocks and plastic water bottles, and it didn’t take long for police to retaliate with tear gas and rubber bullets, the Miami Herald reported. When Ratlieff was hit, the woman, who worked as a grant writer for a nonprofit, told the newspaper she didn’t immediately realize she had been shot. She felt pressure, fell to the ground, and saw people running around her “frantic.”
”But it wasn’t until people started to try to lift me up and I saw there were pools of blood on the ground and people were saying, ‘she’s been shot. She’s been shot,’” Ratlieff said. She thought people were exaggerating, that she couldn’t have been shot while looking for someone to help relieve her of pain from the tear gas. It wasn’t until she saw the blood as a young man used a shirt to put pressure on her wound that she asked “was I shot,” Ratlieff said.
The man told her yes, and she cried as the man and other bystanders figured out a way to get her to the hospital. “They weren’t concerned about anything but getting me to the hospital,” Ratlieff told the Miami Herald. She said they drove her to the hospital, carried her inside, and waited for her for about an hour to make sure she was OK.
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis, who later condemned what happened to Ratleiff as “reprehensible,” said she shouldn't have been in the area anyway, the Miami Herald reported. Her attorneys, Michael Davis and Ben Kuehne, informed the city earlier this month that she had retained counsel.
“LaToya has a broad spectrum of legal options that we are considering. Filing a federal civil rights lawsuit is certainly among those options,” they told the newspaper in an email. “We have not yet made any decision as to what legal options she will pursue. Her decision will in part depend upon the City of Fort Lauderdale.”
Watch the subcommittee briefing here:
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