Lethal risks of ‘rubber bullets’
Skull fractures, lost eyes among protester injuries No national standards in US for ‘soft’ projectiles Police in some areas are breaking their own rules
Megan Matthews thought she was dying.
“I thought my head was blown off,” said Matthews, 22, who was hit in the eye with a sponge-tipped projectile fired by law enforcement at a protest in Denver May 29. “Everything was dark. I couldn’t see.”
Matthews, a soft-spoken art major who lives with her mother, had gone to the demonstration against police brutality carrying bandages, water bottles and milk so she could provide first aid to protesters.
“I couldn’t really grasp how bad my injury was,” said Matthews, who had a broken nose, fractured facial bones and multiple lacerations on her face. “So much blood was pouring out. I was wearing a mask, and the whole mask was filling up with blood. I was trying to breathe through it. I kept telling myself, ‘Don’t stop breathing.’ ”
Three weeks later, Matthew is struggling with her vision, and her doctor says she may never completely heal. Others fared far worse.
In a joint investigation into law enforcement actions at protests across the country after George Floyd’s death in police custody, Kaiser Health News and USA TODAY found that some officers appear to have violated their department’s own rules when they fired “less lethal” projectiles at protesters who were for the most part peacefully assembled.
Critics have assailed those tactics as civil rights and First Amendment violations, and four federal judges have ordered temporary restrictions on their use. At least 60 protesters sustained serious head injuries, including a broken jaw, traumatic brain injuries and blindness, based on news reports, interviews with victims and witnesses and a list compiled by Scott Reynhout, a Los Angeles researcher.
Photos and videos on social media show protesters with large bruises or deep gashes on the throat, hands, arms, legs, chest, rib cage and stomach, all caused by what law enforcement calls “kinetic impact projectiles” and bystanders call “rubber bullets.”
At least 20 people have suffered se
“I was wearing a mask, and the whole mask was filling up with blood . ... I kept telling myself, ‘Don’t stop breathing.’ ”
Megan Matthews
vere eye injuries, including seven people who lost an eye, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Photographer Linda Tirado, 37, lost an eye after being hit by a foam projectile in Minneapolis. Brandon Saenz, 26, lost an eye and several teeth after being hit with a “sponge round” in Dallas. Leslie Furcron, 59, was placed in a medically induced coma after she was shot between the eyes with a “bean bag” round in La Mesa, California.
Derrick Sanderlin, 27, helped defuse a confrontation at a protest in San Jose, California, on May 29. While he was trying to protect a young woman from police, he was hit with a projectile that ruptured a testicle and his doctor said may leave him infertile.
With terms like “foam,” “sponge” and “bean bag,” the projectiles may sound harmless. They’re not.
“On Day One of training, they tell you, ‘Don’t shoot anywhere near the head or neck,’” said Charlie Mesloh, a certified instructor on the use of police projectiles and a professor at Northern Michigan University. “That’s considered deadly force.”
Floyd’s death sparked the nation’s most widespread street protests in decades, drawing a massive response from police dressed in riot gear. Although many large metropolitan police departments own these projectiles, they had never before been used on a national scale, Mesloh said.
Witnesses say law enforcement in several major cities used less-lethal projectiles against nonviolent protesters, shot into crowds, aimed at faces and fired at close range – each of which can run counter to policies.
Police have said they fired the weapons to protect themselves and property in chaotic, dangerous scenes.
The projectiles, intended to incapacitate violent aggressors without killing them, have evolved from the rubber bullets developed in the 1970s by the British military to quell uprisings in Northern Ireland. They are designed to travel more slowly than bullets, with blunt tips meant to cause pain but not intended to penetrate the body.
They come in many forms, including cylindrical wooden blocks, bulletshaped plastic missiles tipped with stiff sponge or foam, fabric sacks filled with metal birdshot, and pepper-spray balls, which are about the size of a paintball and contain the active chemical in pepper spray. Some are fired by special launchers with muzzles the diameter of a cardboard toilet-paper roll; others can be fired from shotguns.
They can cause devastating injuries. A study published in 2017 in the medical journal BMJ Open found that 3% of people hit by projectiles worldwide died. Fifteen percent of the 1,984 people studied were permanently injured.
“Given the inherent inaccuracy” of the projectiles and the risk of serious injury, death and misuse, the authors concluded they “do not appear to be an appropriate means of force in crowd-control settings.”
Yet manufacturers continue to market them on their websites for that purpose. Defense Technology says its “eXact iMpact” sponge projectile is “used for crowd control, patrol and tactical applications.” PepperBall says the uses for its projectiles include “antiriot” and “crowd control.”
Security Devices International describes its “blunt impact projectiles” like weapons of war, saying they’re “designed for military, peacekeeping, homeland security, law enforcement, correctional services and private sector security.” It adds, “they are ideal for crowd control.”
The companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Police set their own rules
There are no national standards for police use of less-lethal projectiles and no comprehensive data on their use, said Brian Higgins, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
So the nation’s more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies establish their own rules for when they should be used, who’s allowed to fire them and how to hold their officers accountable.
Many police departments don’t require officers to document their use of projectiles, Higgins said, which makes it difficult to know how often they’re used.
Denver’s policy says officers should use projectiles only on a “combative or physically resistive person whose conduct rises at least to the level of active aggression,” to prevent others from being harmed, or to “incapacitate a suicidal person who cannot be safely controlled with other force.”
Matthews said she was standing 5 feet from other peaceful protesters at the Denver demonstration and nowhere near anyone rowdy. She suspects her shooting was no accident.
“Either they targeted her face or they fired indiscriminately at the crowd,” said Ross Ziev, Matthews’ lawyer. “Either way, that poses a tremendous safety hazard.”
A federal lawsuit accuses Denver police of “targeting protesters, press, and medics” and aiming projectiles “at the heads and groins of individuals, in a clear tactic to inflict maximum damage, pain and distress.”
The Denver Police Department “takes complaints of inappropriate use of force seriously and has initiated Internal Affairs investigations into officers’ actions during demonstrations that may be violations of policy,” a department spokesman said.
A federal judge in Denver issued a temporary order limiting the use of projectiles and tear gas. The Denver Police Department “has failed in its duty to police its own,” U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote.
Judges in Seattle, Dallas and the Bay Area have issued similar injunctions, and cities such as San Jose, Atlanta and Austin have moved to curb their use.
As of 2013, 37% of police departments in the U.S. authorized the use of “soft projectiles,” according to the most recent survey released by the U.S. Department of Justice. That included the largest police departments in the country and more than half of those serving 10,000 or more citizens.
But in day-to-day policing in the United States, kinetic impact projectiles are rarely used, according to a study published in 2018.
Something changed when protests erupted after Floyd’s death, said Higgins, a former police chief of Bergen County, New Jersey. “It’s almost like we’ve opened the floodgates,” Higgins said.
Projectiles should be “your last resort before you go to lethal force,” Higgins said. “That’s how dangerous they are.”
In field tests, Mesloh has found that bean bag rounds can travel far faster than advertised. He focused on rounds that were supposed to fly out of a shotgun at 250 to 300 feet per second, 21⁄2 to three times faster than a major league fastball. Several traveled 600 feet per second. One bean bag clocked in at 900 feet per second, about the same speed as a .45-caliber bullet, he said.
Police and their advocates emphasize that officers must make high-stakes decisions in chaotic situations without time for reflection. Often they fear for their physical safety, said Nick Rogers, a detective and the president of the Denver police union.
“We probably had 30 to 40 police suffering injuries from bricks and rocks. And that’s not being reported.”
The number is closer to 50, according to a list provided by Denver police.
In San Jose, police Capt. Jason Dwyer said firing projectiles is safer than trying to control a crowd using nightsticks. Dwyer, who was struck by a rock, said at a news conference that police were justified using projectiles and tear gas against the crowd, who turned his city into a “war zone.”
Shot without warning
Soren Stevenson, 25, said he was unarmed when he was shot by law enforcement May 31 in Minneapolis.
Protesters were peaceful but unnerved by police in riot gear, Stevenson said. He moved to the front of the crowd, about 30 feet from police, to protect protesters behind him.
Suddenly, officers launched two explosive devices at demonstrators. Tear gas filled the air.
“The police knew it was a peaceful protest,” Stevenson said. “I did not hear
any instructions or commands from police. It went from protest to shooting, just like that.”
Stevenson said he was trying to comprehend the explosions when something slammed into his face, knocking the lenses from his glasses and spinning him around. He said his skull, cheekbone, nose and jaw were fractured. He also suffered a concussion.
On June 10, surgeons took out Stevenson’s eye. They inserted a prosthetic that is expected to eventually settle with surrounding tissue, and he’ll get a glass lens at some point. But he’ll never again have normal vision.
“I can’t imagine a more effective way to destroy an eyeball than these socalled kinetic impact technologies,” said Dr. George Williams, clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. His group and Physicians for Human Rights have called for a ban on less-lethal projectiles, including sponge-tipped bullets, pepper-spray balls and bean bag rounds.
‘It was definitely intentional’
C.J. Montano, 24, has a bruise on his forehead in the shape of a circle – visible evidence of the projectile that caused bleeding inside his brain.
“They shot me directly in the face,” said Montano, a former Marine who was hospitalized in the intensive care unit after attending a protest May 30 in Los Angeles. “It was definitely intentional.”
As the crowd moved back amid tear gas, he and another man were left in a no-man’s land, 50 feet from police and another 50 feet away from the crowd, Montano said.
Officers fired.
“I got hit in the hip and the stomach at the same time,” Montano said.
Five minutes later, Montano said, he stood up with his hands in the air. He said that’s when he felt a powerful force hit his forehead.
“It was just like a really, really hard thud,” Montano said. “I lost all vision in my left eye, all hearing in my left ear.”
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating 56 allegations of misconduct by officers during the protests – half of which involved alleged use of force.
Montano’s description of the shooting appears to violate the Los Angeles Police Department’s policy, which explicitly prohibits police from using pepper-spray balls, sponge and foam projectiles and other less-lethal force against people who passively resist or disobey them.
Demonstrators in Minneapolis, San Jose, Denver and Dallas described being shot with less-lethal projectiles even though those departments don’t allow them to be used against nonviolent people. In some cases, such as in Denver and Minneapolis, law enforcement from other agencies were called in to help and it’s unclear who fired.
The Los Angeles Police Department said it’s investigating Montano’s shooting, which occurred “amidst a fluid protest that at times became dangerous for both officers and demonstrators.”
In San Jose, attorney Sarah Marinho, who is representing Sanderlin, said police violated their rules when they shot him; he was armed only with a small cardboard sign. At the time he was shot, Sanderlin was begging police to stop firing at unarmed people, including women, at close range.
A San Jose police duty manual states that specially trained officers may fire projectiles against people when suspects are “armed with a weapon likely to cause serious bodily injury or death” or in “situations where its use is likely to prevent any person from being seriously injured.”
San Jose police have said they are investigating the shooting; they did not return phone calls for this story. Mayor Sam Liccardo tweeted, “What happened to Derrick Sanderlin was wrong,” and he pledged to push for a ban on less-lethal projectiles.
Stephen James, an assistant research professor at Washington State University, said such projectiles should never be used to disperse a crowd, but they do have an important role in the law enforcement arsenal.
“I would never advocate for taking them away,” James said. “If you take away less-lethal weapons, then deadly force is the fallback.”
Baltimore learns from past
For residents and police in Baltimore, Floyd’s killing recalled one of the city’s most painful moments.
Five years earlier, Baltimore erupted in violence after a man named Freddie Gray died in police custody. A Justice Department investigation concluded Baltimore police had routinely violated residents’ constitutional rights, discriminated against Black Americans and used excessive force.
Baltimore brought in new leadership. Community groups began working with police. Policies changed.
And after George Floyd died, a curious thing happened in Baltimore: Demonstrations were peaceful. There are no accounts of police firing less-lethal weapons.
Baltimore now has strict rules governing the use of kinetic impact projectiles. In the police department’s use-of-force policies, the No. 1 principle is the “sanctity of human life.” Whenever a less-lethal weapon is fired in the line of duty, it must be reported and investigated within 24 hours.
Erricka Bridgeford, founder of the anti-violence group Baltimore Ceasefire 365, was heartbroken when she saw police in other cities shooting demonstrators with rubber bullets and pepper-spray balls.
The weapons aren’t “a way to deescalate. It’s a way to harm people,” she said. “Treating a crowd of people like animals? ‘Oh, my God, they’re shooting into the crowd!’ How is that a good strategy?”
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.