Protests erupted in cities across the country on May 30, the Saturday after George Floyd's death in police custody in Minneapolis. As law enforcement officers moved to clear the streets, some fired what are called "less lethal" munitions.
The Washington Post found that eight people lost vision in one eye after being struck by police projectiles, including lead pellets packed in cloth pouches that were fired from shotguns. They were among 12 people who were partially blinded by police during a week of national unrest.
Of the eight who lost sight that day, six were protesters, one was a photojournalist, and another was a passerby. Drawing on cellphone and surveillance videos, along with other records, The Post reconstructed the circumstances of three of those incidents in detail.
Watch the video ... to see what happened — and to compare it with the official accounts of those incidents and with police department rules on when officers are permitted to use force.
Meg Kelly, Joyce Sohyun Lee and Jon Swaine
Washington Post, July 14, 2020
Balin Brake (21, Fort Wayne, Indiana) lost his right eye after being hit in the face with a gas canister. Police stated Brake was injured when he "pick[ed] up the canister to throw it back at [the] officers. When he bent over another canister was deployed in the area and that canister skipped and hit the protester in the eye."
Video from the scene shows the police's statement is a lie from beginning to end. Brake was actually protesting peacefully with his hands up and as he was running away from the intersection, he turned back to face the police and was hit directly in the face.
Lie #1: Brake was not bending down.
Lie #2: Brake was not throwing anything.
Lie #3: The canister did not skip.
John Sanders (24, Cleveland, Ohio) was blinded in his left eye by a "beanbag" round. He was walking towards a building to take photographs of graffiti when two men he didn't know started throwing bricks. Video shows Sanders walking away from the area when he was shot. A police report minimized Sanders's injury, calling it "a laceration to his [swollen] left eye".Thread on one case from our @washingtonpost video investigation https://t.co/jpcxEhTeBt— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) July 14, 2020
1/ This is 21-year-old Balin Brake of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Brake lost his right eye when he was shot in the face with a police gas canister at a protest in downtown Fort Wayne on May 30. pic.twitter.com/F60QFvod5T
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We reviewed ~400 protest videos and asked experts to tell us what they saw. What we found in one instance after another was a willingness by police to escalate confrontations. My latest w/ @lhwaldron, @moizsyed, & @A_L https://t.co/tVbCghT5Xo— Talia Buford (@TaliaBuford) July 16, 2020
"In 59 videos, pepper spray and tear gas were used improperly; in a dozen others, officers used batons to strike noncombative demonstrators; and in 87 videos, officers punched, pushed and kicked retreating protesters."https://t.co/7L2wMf8xTR— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) July 16, 2020
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Catherine Herridge, CBS News: Why are African-Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?Salon, July 15, 2020:
Donald Trump: So are white people. So are white people. What a terrible question to ask. So are white people. More white people, by the way. More white people.
[W]hite Americans make up 60% of the population, while Black people make up just over 13%. A 2018 study published by the American Public Health Association showed that Black men were 350% more likely to be killed by police than white men. Another study by Harvard researchers earlier this year similarly found that Black people were about 300% more likely to be killed by police than white people.Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2019:
About 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police, according to a new analysis of deaths involving law enforcement officers. That makes them 2.5 times more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with cops. ...***
[The Rutgers University study considered all deaths between 2013-2018]
For Latino men and boys, the risk was up to 1.4 times higher than it was for whites. For Native American men, the risk was 1.2 to 1.7 times higher. ...
[B]lack women were about 1.4 times as likely to be killed by police as white women ... Native American women were from 1.1 to 2.1 times as likely to be killed as their white peers. ...
During the study period, police use of force accounted for 1.6% of all deaths of black men between the ages of 20 and 24. It was also responsible for 1.2% of deaths of Latino and Native American men. However, police violence accounted for just 0.5% of deaths of white and Asian American men in that age range.
Police in Stonington, Connecticut, waited 17 days before arresting a white couple for attacking a 59-year-old Black hotel worker on June 26, even though police knew the identity of the suspects and most of the assault was captured on the hotel's surveillance video. Crystal Caldwell suffered a concussion and injuries to her eyes, face, wrist, ribs, and back. After the couple requested treatment at a local hospital, police allowed them to leave the state without being charged. The police stated they were unable to enter the hospital (the couple requested treatment) because of COVID-19 precautions, but a hospital spokesperson disputed that claim.
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Donald Trump's new choice for Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy (he's completely unqualified, but he gave $2+ million to the GOP (surprise!)), has a clear mandate to make mail service slower, less reliable, and more expensive. As more people than ever before are planning to cast votes by mail, slower mail service could cause some ballots to arrive late and possibly not be counted. The timing of DeJoy's appointment is no accident.
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A new Axios/Ipsos poll shows 78% of Democrats wear a mask at all times when in public. Republicans? Only 45%.
Wearing A Mask In Public
Democrats Republicans
February 8% 6% (Have you worn or bought a mask since the outbreak?)
April 38% 24%
July 78% 45%
Worried About A Coronavirus Outbreak
Democrats Republicans
February 26% 24%
July 80% 41%
As one Daily Kos writer posted:
Axios notes that there "were no partisan differences on masks in February," and Republicans and Democrats were "about equally worried" about the pandemic at that time.One Twitter comment:
Everything that's happened since to create the partisan disparity can—and very much should—be blamed on specific Republican elected officials, talk show hosts, radio hosts, and other conservative luminaries who created that disparity on purpose ...
The more Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, and the entire collected Republican establishment botched and bumbled vital pandemic response efforts, the more Fox News hosts insisted to their audiences that none of those efforts were really important. When masks became scarce, Trump's boot-polishers insisted that masks were unneeded. When federal testing efforts collapsed—simply collapsed, apparently after Jared Kushner discovered it was too complex to be easily solved—conservative pundits sniffed that it was ridiculous to even contemplate conducting tests on the scale and frequency of what experts were advising. When Trump staked himself the quick-fix of a specific anti-malaria drug, they all obediently sold it and sold it hard; when the White House gave up on fighting the pandemic at all, instead declaring that everyone should just go back to work while pretending nothing was happening, all of Republicanism swiftly adopted that same new line.
It has varied only when individual Republican state leaders determine that the number of people dying in their own states are so high as to possibly ruin their own careers that anything but the bare minimum is done.
Imagine Londoners during the Battle of Britain in 1940 saying, "I'll keep my lights on if I want to."
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