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 immediately felt like a battlefield medic.
Police have been pushing into the camp after an hours-long standoff. Chan, 31, a medical tent volunteer, stated protesters limped in with extreme puncture wounds, however there was little hope of getting them to a hospital by way of the chaos exterior. Chan suspects the accidents have been brought on by rubber bullets or different “less lethal” projectiles, which police have confirmed have been fired at protesters.
“It would pierce through skin and gouge deep into people’s bodies,” she stated. “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 have been staffed day and night time by a rotating crew of medical doctors, nurses, medical college students, EMTs, and volunteers with no formal medical coaching.
At instances, the escalating violence exterior the tent remoted injured protesters from entry to ambulances, the medics stated, so the wounded walked to a close-by hospital or have been carried past the borders of the protest so that they might be pushed to the emergency room.
“I’ve never been in a setting where we’re blocked from getting higher level of care,” Chan stated. “That was terrifying to me.”
Three of the medics interviewed by KFF Well being Information stated they have been current when police swept the encampment Could 2 and described a number of accidents that appeared to have been brought on by “less lethal” projectiles.
Much less deadly projectiles — together with beanbags crammed with metallic pellets, sponge-tipped rounds, and projectiles generally often called rubber bullets — are utilized by police to subdue suspects or disperse crowds or protests. Police drew widespread condemnation for utilizing the weapons in opposition to Black Lives Matter demonstrations that swept the nation after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Though the title 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 straight contradict an account from the Los Angeles Police Division. After police cleared the encampment, LAPD Chief Dominic Choi stated 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 stated in emailed statements that they might examine how their officers responded to the protest. The LAPD assertion stated the company was conducting a evaluate of the way it and different regulation enforcement businesses responded, which might result in a “detailed report.”
The Freeway Patrol assertion stated 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, in line with the assertion.
Video footage that circulated on-line after the protest appeared to point out 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 stated 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 scholar and volunteer medic, stated he witnessed a police officer shoot no less than two protesters with much less deadly projectiles, together with a person who collapsed after being hit “square in the chest.” Fukushima stated 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 stated. “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 stated. He stated 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 facet.
“I find him, and I’m like, ‘Hey, are you OK?’” Fukushima stated. “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 scholar stationed within the tent, stated that throughout 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 middle of their chest, and a 3rd with a “gushing” minimize over their proper eye and potential damaged rib. Raghuram stated sufferers instructed her the injuries have been brought on by police projectiles, which she stated matched the severity of their accidents.
The sufferers made it clear the cops have been closing in on the medical tent, Raghuram stated, however she stayed put.
“We will never leave a patient,” she stated, 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 considered one of many which were held on school campuses throughout the nation as college students against Israel’s ongoing warfare in Gaza demand universities help a ceasefire or divest from firms tied to Israel. Police have used drive to take away protesters at Columbia College, Emory College, and the colleges of Arizona, Utah, and South Florida, amongst others.
At UCLA, scholar protesters arrange a tent encampment on April 25 in a grassy plaza exterior the campus’s Royce Corridor theater, ultimately drawing hundreds of supporters, in line with the Los Angeles Instances. Days later, a “violent mob” of counterprotesters “attacked the camp,” the Instances reported, trying 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 Could 2, clearing tents and arresting lots of 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 advisor to research 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, stated that as counterprotesters have been attacking she additionally noticed about 10 personal campus safety officers stand by, “hands in their pockets,” as college students have been bashed and bloodied.
Austin stated she handled sufferers with cuts to the face and potential cranium fractures. The medical tent despatched no less than 20 individuals to the hospital that night, she stated.
“Any medical professional would describe these as serious injuries,” Austin stated. “There were people who required hospitalization — not just a visit to the emergency room — but actual hospitalization.”
Police Ways ‘Lawful but Awful’
UCLA protesters are removed from the primary to be injured by much less deadly projectiles.
In recent times, 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.
Throughout the nationwide protests following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, no 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, in line with a joint investigation by KFF Well being Information and USA Immediately.
In 2004, in Boston, a school scholar 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,” stated 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, stated the footage reveals California Freeway Patrol officers firing beanbag rounds from a shotgun. Bueermann stated the footage didn’t present sufficient context to find out if the projectiles have been getting used “reasonably,” which is a regular established by federal courts, or being fired “indiscriminately,” which was outlawed by a California regulation 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 stated. “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.
