The Los Angeles Police department remains investigating an event of a disabled homeless man who was shot within the face with rubber bullets as police were arresting protesters Tuesday, an LAPD spokesperson told .
Los Angeles cops arrested dozens of protesters in downtown l. a. on Broadway between 4th and 5th streets on Tuesday, June 2, as curfew set certain the night, because the l. a. Daily News reported. Protesters fled to an apartment house as police fired rubber bullets. One bullet hit a homeless man during a wheelchair right above his left eye, drawing blood and creating an outsized welt.
Paramedics and LAPD officers treated the injured man and wheeled him away, consistent with the Daily News. The man’s current condition is unknown. It’s also unconfirmed whether he was a part of the protest or simply simply caught within the crossfire.
LAPD Public Information Officer Norma Eisenman told Heavy that they’re conscious of the incident and are receiving tips also as videos and photos about it. However, as their department of internal affairs remains investigating the incident and therefore the photos, they can’t discuss the matter as of yet. Updates are going to be posted on their website.
“The department is conscious of the video and we’ll be conducting an investigation, so there’ll be no further comment,” Eisenman said.
You can see images of the incident within the article here. Lily Lynch, co-founder and writer for Balkanist Magazine, posted photos taken of the injured homeless man on Twitter. Her post gained a minimum of 173,300 retweets and 376,900 likes.
The LAPD shot a homeless man in a wheelchair in the face. pic.twitter.com/sYXy1eKONJ
— Lily Lynch (@lilyslynch) June 5, 2020
The incident occurred following a protest at hall with thousands of individuals gathering as a part of the Black Lives Matter movement, consistent with the Daily News. They came to protest the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and other moments of police brutality.
The protest didn’t see confrontations between police and protesters until curfew set in at 6 p.m. when police warned that they ought to leave or face arrest. Protesters at one point demanded that officers take a knee, consistent with the publication. Since then, police made a minimum of a 100 arrests that night, consistent with NBC l. a. .
Days before the incident, 1,000 National Guard troops received the town under the request of Mayor Eric Garcetti, consistent with the l. a. Times. Half would assist the Sheriff’s Department and half would help the LAPD. In recent weeks,
the Guard had been sent to nursing homes in L.A. County to assist with the coronavirus situation. The last time the National Guard are deployed in L.A. was in 1994 days after the Northridge earthquake.
Almost half people that are killed by police have a disability, consistent with a 2015 report by the Ruderman Family Foundation (via NBC News). The report, written by historian David Perry and disability expert Lawrence Carter-Long, notes that “police became the default responders to psychological state calls.” They postulate that folks with psychiatric disabilities are presumed to be “dangerous to themselves and others” in police interactions. The report notes that debates over police brutality have understandably focused on race, but which will obscure debates on how disability comes into play.
