Journalists come under fire covering L.A. protests
Sergio Olmos has covered hundreds of days of protests in his career as a journalist. He estimates he’s been hit dozens of times by what are known as less-lethal rounds — a broad category that includes rubber bullets, plastic bullets and pepper balls. Still, he says he’s never seen police so trigger-happy with these munitions.
“It was the most amount of less-lethals I’ve seen used in a single day protest,” he told The Washington Post, regarding law-enforcement responses to Sunday’s protests in Los Angeles against immigration raids in the area.
So, it wasn’t a surprise when a Los Angeles Police Department officer shot what he believes to be a 40mm sponge grenade into his torso. “I got hit in the chest and it’s a moment of, ‘What the f–?’ ” he said in an interview Monday. “And then I was like, ‘Oh, f–, that hurt.’ ” He put his camera down momentarily, to check that he was okay.
Olmos, 35, an investigative reporter for the nonprofit news organization CalMatters, was in the protest crowd shooting video on his iPhone. He was at the intersection of East Temple and North Alameda streets, just blocks from a complex of federal buildings, when police shot into the crowd and hit him. In a video posted on X and provided to The Post, an LAPD officer appears to raise his firearm and point it at the crowd. When Olmos is hit, he drops his phone momentarily.
Olmos said police were routinely firing into crowds as a method of moving them back. The LAPD did not respond to a request for comment about the incident.
On Tuesday, CNN said in a statement that one of its reporting teams was briefly detained in Los Angeles — but the situation was quickly resolved after they presented their media credentials.
Olmos isn’t alone. Estimates vary on how many journalists have been injured by police projectiles since the protests began — the Committee to Protect Journalists put the number at “more than 20,” while another press freedom group, Reporters Without Borders, estimated at least 27. Social media platforms have become inundated with first-hand accounts of graphic injuries from less-lethal munitions. In addition to local police from the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and California Highway Patrol, there’s also a federal presence. On Sunday, President Donald Trump deployed the California National Guard to quash protests he called “violent, instigated riots.” California has since sued the Trump administration, calling the deployment “an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act.”
Lauren Tomasi, a correspondent for 9News in Australia, was shot in the leg with a less-lethal round while filming a live television news segment Sunday. Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the advocacy group Free Press, said it’s “one of the most explicit visual examples I’ve ever seen in my career of retaliation by the government directly against journalists for them doing their job protected by the First Amendment.”
Protest videos are chaotic, Benavidez added. “But this was a press video clip of her covering the situation, panning the [TV] camera through the scene as she’s describing it. And the moment that law enforcement sees her doing her constitutionally protected job, they target her. That, right there, is a sign of the times.”
“It’s incredibly concerning to see the use of force in the L.A. protests and the way that it’s impacting journalists’ ability to document the protests safely,” said Katherine Jacobsen, who serves as U.S., Canada and Caribbean program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In the incidents, Jacobsen said she sees echoes of 2020, when scores of journalists were hit by projectiles and injured while covering nationwide protests in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd. A freelance photojournalist, Linda Tirado, was hit in the face by a foam bullet and lost sight in her left eye while covering protests in Minneapolis.
“It’s important not to extrapolate that this might turn into something like what we saw in 2020 and to kind of get ahead of ourselves, but at the same time it’s very, very difficult not to reflect on the patterns we’re seeing, as far as the use of force in these types of situations, and the way that it adversely affects journalists’ ability to safely do their jobs,” Jacobson said.
At the time, in late May 2020, a British photojournalist named Nick Stern said he was hit by multiple rubber bullets fired by LAPD officers and struck by batons. He ultimately settled a lawsuit he filed against the city for $150,000. On Saturday, Stern was again injured during protests in L.A. and underwent surgery to remove a plastic bullet. “There was something hard sticking out of the back of my leg and my leg was getting wet from blood,” he told the BBC.
A New York Times reporter was also hit Sunday with a rubber bullet, the newspaper reported: “The reporter was treated at a hospital but not seriously injured.” (The Times did not provide additional comment on the incident, when asked.)
Ryanne Mena, who covers crime and public safety for the Southern California News Group, said she was hit in the left thigh by a pepper ball bullet Friday and hit by a rubber bullet just above her right ear Saturday — both times, she said, by agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations unit. DHS did not respond to a request for comment about the incident.
She likened her injury Friday to being “punched really hard in the leg.” On Saturday, “that one felt like someone threw a baseball at my head,” she said.
Mena, 29, said she has spoken with about a dozen other journalists who have sustained injuries from less-lethal projectiles.
She hoped to continue covering protests Monday night, but decided she first needs a doctor to check her for possible head trauma. “People are very angry, and I want to tell stories about that and amplify those voices,” she said. But, she added, “I’d like to be medically cleared before I go.”
Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, a 38-year-old freelance reporter, was on assignment for LA Public Press in Paramount, California, on Saturday when he was struck in the head by what he believed to be a teargas canister. The munition exploded and covered him in particulate matter, temporarily blinding him. “I remember screaming obscenities, because it hurt really bad,” he said.
After being treated by protest medics, he rushed himself to a nearby emergency room at St. Francis Medical Center, fearing a concussion or other traumatic brain injury. “I am extremely lucky that it wasn’t,” he said. “If it had hit me an inch below, I would have lost an eye.”
Several journalists who were hit, including Beckner-Carmitchel, Olmos, Stern and Mena, say they were wearing clearly identifiable press passes at the time — which Jacobsen, of CPJ, said could be seen as evidence of intentional targeting.
“I feel that it was either intentional or reckless,” Beckner-Carmitchel said.
Press advocates say that attacks on journalists — even if inadvertent — chill their First Amendment freedoms and inhibit citizens from learning about the news of the day and the actions of the government.