Woman shot in face merits answers
LaToya Ratlieff is “pissed.” And she has every right to be. Six months ago, a Fort Lauderdale police officer shot her in the head with a rubber bullet.
To this day, Ratlieff struggles with the damage even a rubber bullet can do to one’s body and psyche.
To this day, neither Fort Lauderdale police, nor the city, has officially issued an apology or an explanation to Ratlieff, who lives in Delray Beach. They say the matter still is under investigation.
And, to this day, we all are still waiting to learn why there is a disturbing disconnect between the story police told about an officer being in grave danger from Black Lives Matter demonstrators and the video showing that no such situation existed when an officer fired, hitting Ratlieff.
We hope the police department isn’t dragging its feet here. We hope police officials aren’t lying.
In addition, there have been no substantial reforms, given that demands for police reform were at the root of protests launched around the world.
Ratlieff, recently interviewed by Miami Herald reporter Sarah Blaskey, rightly fears she was shot for nothing. Literally. After all, Ratlieff was attending a peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration, exercising her right to demand better treatment of Black citizens by police — just like thousands of others were doing across the country in
2020.
Demonstrators have said that police were the aggressors that May night, with things heating up after one officer, identified as Steven Poherence, shoved a kneeling woman in the head. Demonstrators, outraged, hurled water bottles at officers, who responded by firing off tear gas. As Ratlieff urged a group of young men to kneel to show police — heavily armed — that they were not threats, one officer fired rubber bullets, one of which hit her 30 feet away. A bullet struck Ratlieff just above the right eye, fracturing her eye socket and swelling her eyes shut.
She was the most seriously injured demonstrator — and the luckiest. Doctors told her it would have been a different story if the bullet had struck her in the eye.
The bullet came without provocation, witnesses and Ratlieff
have said, although in the days after the shooting the department, and even Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis, tried to paint Ratlieff as an instigator. She wasn’t, as video footage and still photos revealed.
She is angry that half a year after she was shot, no significant changes have been made to policing in Fort Lauderdale. The police chief, who blamed protesters for provoking officers and starting the violence, now is gone. But the officer who shot her is still on the street.
The police manual makes clear that a shot to the head with a rubber bullet, such as Ratlieff received, is potentially lethal and should not be fired unless deadly force is justified. Doesn’t seem that it was in this case.
Here’s what the department says today: “The City of Fort Lauderdale remains committed to conducting a thorough and objective investigation into this incident,” a city spokesperson said in a statement to the Herald on Dec. 10. “The investigation continues, and we plan to meet with her prior to its conclusion.”
Ratlieff and the rest of us have every right to ask: And then what? The police department needs to deliver a more satisfactory answer than it has so far.