In Richmond, protests against police brutality continue every night.
Police have often responded with force, using pepper spray and rubber bullets. Protestors and their advocates are pleading for them to stop. Here’s a look at what it’s been like on the ground.
In the past month protestor Goad Gatsby has learned the difference between pepper spray and tear gas.
“Tear gas doesn’t immediately hit, but then you feel like you’re being choked. You’re gasping for breath,” Gatsby described. “Pepper spray will stay all night…. it will feel like a sunburn, because it is a chemical burn.”
Speaking near the Robert E. Lee Monument on a recent afternoon, Gatsby says he’s been hit multiples times, sometimes without warning.
According to RADIOIQ’s review of coverage from multiple news outlets, eye-witness accounts, and police press releases, Richmond and State Police have used chemical munitions at least eight nights over the past month. State police have alsousedrubber bullets, Richmond police say they don’t have rubber bullets.
One evening in June, Gatsby was on the sidewalk near the Lee Monument. After the sun set, officers told people to leave the area and Gatsby says they were complying when officers fired rubber bullets into the crowd.
“I was standing on the sidewalk, in the neighborhood I live in and I just hear whooshing past me a foam tipped bullet,” he said. “ A less lethal round, chest level, just going past me.”
He went back to pick it up and he still has it. It’s a stubby black thing, about the size of his palm.
"I really cannot stress enough that I thought somebody was going to die in that confrontation."
In addition to using weapons like rubber bullets and tear gas, protestors also say officers have used unncessary physical force.
Lana Heath de Martínez was out on Monument Avenue around 3 a.m. on June 24th. She and friends had stopped on the sidewalk to wait for marchers when she says dozens of cops came around the corner, chasing one person. She took out her phone and started to film a video.
“They arrest him and you see all this on video. They line up so we can’t record, so we can’t have a clear view,” she described in an interview later. “We’re trying to see if this man is okay. They’ve got between four and six officers, depending on the minute, on top of him. And he’s smaller than me.”
The video is dark and it’s not clear what’s happening because there are police blocking the camera. But you can hear Heath de Martínez narrating. “There’s like six cops over there beating up on this dude,” she cries out.
In an interview a couple days later she said she thought someone was going to die.
“I really cannot stress enough that I thought somebody was going to die in that confrontation," she said. "I really believed that. Things were so heated and so tense.”
She says as she tried to film an officer grabbed her, shoved her, and scratched her.She left soon after that. She doesn’t know what happened to the man on the ground.
A spokesman for Richmond police wouldn’t answer questions about the incident, saying the video would be “shared up the chain for review.” They did not say who the man was or what happened to him.
Instead the spokesman pointed RADIOIQ to different videos, from different nights. One shows an officer in a bullet proof vest on the ground. Richmond police say he was hit by a paintball, but is recovering. Another video is body cam footage from a state trooper. Police say the trooper was struck by a chunk of asphalt. In press releases, Richmond police say protestors have also pointed laser pointers at aircraft.
"Sometimes they just unleash so much smoke bombs and flash bangs it suddenly starts to look like a war zone."
Charlie Schmidt is a lawyer who’s been representing protestors. He says there’s been a pattern of police escalating violence after one triggering event.
“I would say we’re pushing 100 people that have come forward to me and to our coalition of lawyers to state their concerns about how Richmond police are behaving on the streets and behaving towards protestors,” Schmidt said.
Richmond police chose not to answer questions about use of force policies for this story, citing the fact that a new Chief of Police starts the job Wednesday. Given several days and multiple reminders, Virginia State Police didn’t answer any of our questions by deadline.
Those questions included: What is the use of force protocol when deciding whether to use chemical munitions? What is the use of force protocol when deciding to use rubber bullets? How many times has State Police deployed chemical munitions and rubber bullets in the past month?
After the radio version of this story was finalized, a spokeswoman for state police emailed to say that officers “will use only that force reasonably necessary to effectively bring an incident under control… such a determination of which level of force or which technique is most appropriate is based on the particular situation and incident at the moment.”
Attorney Charlie Schmidt argues that officers’ responses have been egregiously disproportionate to protestors’ actions. For instance, one night he witnessed a demonstrator tear down a line of police tape. He watched officers dive into the crowd to grab the man.
“Everyone around them starts to panic, and so that panic draws the attention of the other officers,” he described, adding that police went on to gas the crowd. “Sometimes they just unleash so much smoke bombs and flash bangs it suddenly starts to look like a war zone.”
The ACLU of Virginia says the threat of violence from police unconstitutionally impacts protestors’ rights of speech and assembly. They’re representing several protestors who are now suing state and city police.
“People may not want to go express their right to speech because they’re concerned about what could happen in retaliation for that,” said Eden Heilman, legal director with the ACLU of Virginia.
But officials haven’t given any indication they plan to change tact. A judge declined to intervene with an immediate injunction Tuesday, which would have legally limited officers’ ability to use weapons against protestors.
When questioned last week Richmond’s new incoming chief of police, Gerald Smith, said that when used properly tear gas and pepper spray can help save people and prevent property damage.
“They should be used properly,” Smith said during his first press conference. “Anyone making that decision should be held responsible for the use of those munitions.”
Then Tuesday, without making a public announcement, Virginia’s Governor quietly extended a state of emergency order for Richmond. That was at the request of Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney.
It authorizes the state to spend more than half a million dollars on continued police response to the “civil unrest.”
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
