Inside 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 the chaos exterior. 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 Health News, 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 working 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 instances, the escalating violence exterior 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.”
Chan holds a few of the gadgets she carried together with her on the protest: a headlamp, a tourniquet, a glow stick. She donned scrubs that day with handwritten cellphone numbers for her emergency contact in case of arrest. (Molly Castle Work/KFF Health News)
Volunteer medics mentioned they made do with the supplies they’d, corresponding to utilizing a bit of cardboard to splint a protester’s sprained ankle. (Elaine Chan)
Volunteer medics arrange medical tents inside and across the encampment at UCLA to help injured protesters.(Elaine Chan)
Three of the medics interviewed by KFF Health News mentioned they had been current when police swept the encampment May 2 and described a number of accidents that appeared to have been attributable to “less lethal” projectiles.
Less deadly projectiles — together with beanbags full of steel pellets, sponge-tipped rounds, and projectiles generally often 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. Although 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 straight contradict an account from the Los Angeles Police Department. After police cleared the encampment, LAPD Chief Dominic Choi said in a post 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.
Police officers, together with some reportedly armed with shotguns loaded with “less lethal” projectiles, conflict with protesters at UCLA. The California Highway Patrol mentioned it might examine how its officers responded. The footage, filmed by unbiased journalist Anthony Cabassa, was posted to the social platform X on May 2. (Anthony Cabassa)
In response to questions from KFF Health News, each the LAPD and California Highway 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 regulation enforcement companies responded, which might result in a “detailed report.”
The Highway Patrol assertion mentioned officers warned the encampment that “non-lethal rounds” could also be used if protesters didn’t disperse, and after some grew to become 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 keeping with the assertion.
Video footage that circulated on-line after the protest appeared to point out a Highway 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 Highway Patrol mentioned in its assertion.
The UCLA Police Department, 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 no 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 traces to search for extra injured.
“It did really feel like a war,” Fukushima mentioned. “To be met with such police brutality was so disheartening.”
Jack Fukushima, a UCLA medical pupil and volunteer medic, mentioned he noticed police shoot no less than two protesters with “less-lethal” projectiles through the encampment raid on May 2, 2024.(Molly Castle Work/KFF Health News)
Back 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 facet.
“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 through 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” reduce over their proper eye and attainable damaged rib. Raghuram mentioned sufferers instructed 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.”
Sonia Raghuram, a UCLA medical pupil, volunteered as a medic throughout a pro-Palestinian protest at UCLA, the place she handled sufferers who instructed her they had been wounded by police projectiles.(Molly Castle Work/KFF Health News)
The UCLA protest is one in all many which were held on faculty campuses throughout the nation as college students against Israel’s ongoing conflict in Gaza demand universities help a ceasefire or divest from corporations tied to Israel. Police have used power to take away protesters at Columbia University, Emory University, and the colleges of Arizona, Utah, and South Florida, amongst others.
At UCLA, pupil protesters arrange a tent encampment on April 25 in a grassy plaza exterior the campus’s Royce Hall theater, eventually drawing thousands of supporters, in keeping with the Los Angeles Times. Days later, a “violent mob” of counterprotesters “attacked the camp,” the Times reported, trying to tear down barricades alongside its borders and throwing fireworks on the tents inside.
The following night time, police issued an illegal meeting order, then swept the encampment within the early hours of May 2, clearing tents and arresting tons of by daybreak.
Police have been broadly criticized for not intervening because the conflict between protesters and counterprotesters dragged on for hours. The University of California system introduced it has hired an independent policing 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 attainable cranium fractures. The medical tent despatched no 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.”
Charlotte Austin, a surgical procedure resident in Los Angeles who volunteered as a UCLA medic, says the accidents she witnessed had been critical. “There were people who required hospitalization — not just a visit to the emergency room — but actual hospitalization,” she says.(Molly Castle Work/KFF Health News)
Police Tactics ‘Lawful but Awful’
UCLA protesters are removed from the primary to be injured by much less deadly projectiles.
In latest years, 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 hundreds of thousands to settle lawsuits from the injured. Some of the wounded have by no means been the identical.
During 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 keeping with a joint investigation by KFF Health News and USA Today.
In 2004, in Boston, a school pupil celebrating a Red Sox victory was killed by a projectile filled with pepper-based irritant when it tore by 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 Health News, mentioned the footage reveals California Highway 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 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 mentioned. “And I think a cop racking multiple rounds into a shotgun, firing into protesters, doesn’t look very good.”
This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially unbiased service of the California Health Care Foundation.
Molly Castle Work:
mwork@kff.org,
@mollycastlework
Brett Kelman:
bkelman@kff.org,
@BrettKelman
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