Contained in the protesters’ encampment at UCLA, beneath the glow of hanging flashlights and a deafening backdrop of exploding flash-bangs, OB-GYN resident Elaine Chan all of a sudden felt like a battlefield medic.
Police had been pushing into the camp after an hours-long standoff. Chan, 31, a medical tent volunteer, mentioned protesters limped in with extreme puncture wounds, however there was little hope of getting them to a hospital by way of the chaos outdoors. Chan suspects the accidents had been attributable to rubber bullets or different “less lethal” projectiles, which police have confirmed had been fired at protesters.
“It would pierce through skin and gouge deep into people’s bodies,” she mentioned. “All of them were profusely bleeding. In OB-GYN we don’t treat rubber bullets. … I couldn’t believe that this was allowed to be [done to] civilians — students — without protective gear.”
The UCLA protest, which gathered hundreds in opposition to Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza, started in April and grew to a harmful crescendo this month when counterprotesters and police clashed with the activists and their supporters.
In interviews with KFF Well being Information, Chan and three different volunteer medics described treating protesters with bleeding wounds, head accidents, and suspected damaged bones in a makeshift clinic cobbled collectively in tents with no electrical energy or operating water. The medical tents had been staffed day and night time by a rotating group of medical doctors, nurses, medical college students, EMTs, and volunteers with no formal medical coaching.
At occasions, the escalating violence outdoors the tent remoted injured protesters from entry to ambulances, the medics mentioned, so the wounded walked to a close-by hospital or had been carried past the borders of the protest in order that they could possibly be pushed to the emergency room.
“I’ve never been in a setting where we’re blocked from getting higher level of care,” Chan mentioned. “That was terrifying to me.”
Three of the medics interviewed by KFF Well being Information mentioned they had been current when police swept the encampment Might 2 and described a number of accidents that appeared to have been attributable to “less lethal” projectiles.
Much less deadly projectiles — together with beanbags crammed with metallic pellets, sponge-tipped rounds, and projectiles generally generally known as rubber bullets — are utilized by police to subdue suspects or disperse crowds or protests. Police drew widespread condemnation for utilizing the weapons towards Black Lives Matter demonstrations that swept the nation after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Though the identify of those weapons downplays their hazard, much less deadly projectiles can journey upward of 200 mph and have a documented potential to injure, maim, or kill.
The medics’ interviews instantly contradict an account from the Los Angeles Police Division. After police cleared the encampment, LAPD Chief Dominic Choi mentioned in a put up on the social platform X that there have been “no serious injuries to officers or protestors” as police moved in and made greater than 200 arrests.
In response to questions from KFF Well being Information, each the LAPD and California Freeway Patrol mentioned in emailed statements that they might examine how their officers responded to the protest. The LAPD assertion mentioned the company was conducting a evaluation of the way it and different legislation enforcement businesses responded, which might result in a “detailed report.”
The Freeway Patrol assertion mentioned officers warned the encampment that “non-lethal rounds” could also be used if protesters didn’t disperse, and after some turned an “immediate threat” by “launching objects and weapons,” some officers used “kinetic specialty rounds to protect themselves, other officers, and members of the public.” One officer obtained minor accidents, based on the assertion.
Video footage that circulated on-line after the protest appeared to indicate a Freeway Patrol officer firing much less deadly projectiles at protesters with a shotgun.
“The use of force and any incident involving the use of a weapon by CHP personnel is a serious matter, and the CHP will conduct a fair and impartial investigation to ensure that actions were consistent with policy and the law,” the Freeway Patrol mentioned in its assertion.
The UCLA Police Division, which was additionally concerned with the protest response, didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Jack Fukushima, 28, a UCLA medical pupil and volunteer medic, mentioned he witnessed a police officer shoot not less than two protesters with much less deadly projectiles, together with a person who collapsed after being hit “square in the chest.” Fukushima mentioned he and different medics escorted the surprised man to the medical tent then returned to the entrance strains to search for extra injured.
“It did really feel like a war,” Fukushima mentioned. “To be met with such police brutality was so disheartening.”
Again on the entrance line, police had breached the borders of the encampment and begun to scrum with protesters, Fukushima mentioned. He mentioned he noticed the identical officer who had fired earlier shoot one other protester within the neck.
The protester dropped to the bottom. Fukushima assumed the worst and rushed to his aspect.
“I find him, and I’m like, ‘Hey, are you OK?’” Fukushima mentioned. “To the point of courage of these undergrads, he’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s not my first time.’ And then just jumps right back in.”
Sonia Raghuram, 27, one other medical pupil stationed within the tent, mentioned that in the course of the police sweep she tended to a protester with an open puncture wound on their again, one other with a quarter-sized contusion within the heart of their chest, and a 3rd with a “gushing” minimize over their proper eye and potential damaged rib. Raghuram mentioned sufferers informed her the injuries had been attributable to police projectiles, which she mentioned matched the severity of their accidents.
The sufferers made it clear the law enforcement officials had been closing in on the medical tent, Raghuram mentioned, however she stayed put.
“We will never leave a patient,” she mentioned, describing the mantra within the medical tent. “I don’t care if we get arrested. If I’m taking care of a patient, that’s the thing that comes first.”
The UCLA protest is one in all many which have been held on faculty campuses throughout the nation as college students against Israel’s ongoing struggle in Gaza demand universities help a ceasefire or divest from corporations tied to Israel. Police have used power to take away protesters at Columbia College, Emory College, and the schools of Arizona, Utah, and South Florida, amongst others.
At UCLA, pupil protesters arrange a tent encampment on April 25 in a grassy plaza outdoors the campus’s Royce Corridor theater, finally drawing hundreds of supporters, based on the Los Angeles Occasions. Days later, a “violent mob” of counterprotesters “attacked the camp,” the Occasions reported, making an attempt to tear down barricades alongside its borders and throwing fireworks on the tents inside.
The next night time, police issued an illegal meeting order, then swept the encampment within the early hours of Might 2, clearing tents and arresting a whole bunch by daybreak.
Police have been broadly criticized for not intervening because the conflict between protesters and counterprotesters dragged on for hours. The College of California system introduced it has employed an impartial policing marketing consultant to analyze the violence and “resolve unanswered questions about UCLA’s planning and protocols, as well as the mutual aid response.”
Charlotte Austin, 34, a surgical procedure resident, mentioned that as counterprotesters had been attacking she additionally noticed about 10 non-public campus safety officers stand by, “hands in their pockets,” as college students had been bashed and bloodied.
Austin mentioned she handled sufferers with cuts to the face and potential cranium fractures. The medical tent despatched not less than 20 folks to the hospital that night, she mentioned.
“Any medical professional would describe these as serious injuries,” Austin mentioned. “There were people who required hospitalization — not just a visit to the emergency room — but actual hospitalization.”
Police Techniques ‘Lawful but Awful’
UCLA protesters are removed from the primary to be injured by much less deadly projectiles.
Lately, police throughout the U.S. have repeatedly fired these weapons at protesters, with nearly no overarching requirements governing their use or security. Cities have spent tens of millions to settle lawsuits from the injured. A number of the wounded have by no means been the identical.
Through the nationwide protests following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, not less than 60 protesters sustained critical accidents — together with blinding and a damaged jaw — from being shot with these projectiles, generally in obvious violations of police division insurance policies, based on a joint investigation by KFF Well being Information and USA As we speak.
In 2004, in Boston, a school pupil celebrating a Pink Sox victory was killed by a projectile crammed with pepper-based irritant when it tore by way of her eye and into her mind.
“They’re called less lethal for a reason,” mentioned Jim Bueermann, a former police chief of Redlands, California, who now leads the Future Policing Institute. “They can kill you.”
Bueermann, who reviewed video footage of the police response at UCLA on the request of KFF Well being Information, mentioned the footage reveals California Freeway Patrol officers firing beanbag rounds from a shotgun. Bueermann mentioned the footage didn’t present sufficient context to find out if the projectiles had been getting used “reasonably,” which is a normal established by federal courts, or being fired “indiscriminately,” which was outlawed by a California legislation in 2021.
“There is a saying in policing — ‘lawful but awful’ — meaning that it was reasonable under the legal standards but it looks terrible,” Bueermann mentioned. “And I think a cop racking multiple rounds into a shotgun, firing into protesters, doesn’t look very good.”
This text was produced by KFF Well being Information, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially impartial service of the California Well being Care Basis.
