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Abstract
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On July 28, 2020, we interviewed a medic who had responded the preceding week to a woman calling for medical assistance at a protest against police brutality in Portland, OR, USA. He was wearing garb clearly marked with "medic", a white helmet covered with bright pink crosses, and red crosses on his backpack and both shoulders. As he approached the injured woman, he saw a security official point him out to another man dressed in camouflage-coloured fatigues who was holding a grenade launcher. The medic described to us what happened next: "I was holding my hands up in the surrender position over my head saying as loud as I could, 'I am a medic checking injuries. Don't shoot.' But the guy pointed the grenade launcher and shot me with a 40-mm CS [tear gas] canister that hit my left thigh, right on the side of my left upper thigh. I turned in a pain response, and they hit me with a rubber bullet on my right lateral thigh."
This medic was one of many volunteers providing medical assistance at demonstrations in Portland, over the past 2 months, whom local and federal law enforcement officials severely injured. Another medic we interviewed as part of a Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) investigation in Portland described being shot squarely in his chest by a tear gas canister, resulting in a 15 × 12 cm haematoma surrounding a 5 cm diameter circular abrasion where the canister end hit. We interviewed and examined medics and non-violent demonstrators who had sustained severe head and neck injuries from rubber bullets and other impact munitions. In a PHR report, we have compiled evidence on destruction of volunteer medics' medical supplies, and documented the lack of official provision of medical assistance and transport to injured demonstrators. What we found was evidence of an excessive and disproportionate use of force by the local police (The Portland Police Bureau), and even more serious injuries caused by the federal forces sent to Portland in early July, 2020, by the Trump Administration, against the stated wishes of local and state officials.
For more than three decades, PHR has documented the health harms caused by so-called less than lethal crowd-control weapons such as tear gas, stun grenades, pepper balls, and rubber bullets. These crowd-control weapons are defined as "offering a substantially reduced risk of death when compared to conventional firearms". PHR has reviewed cases upon cases of serious injuries, disability, and death from misuse of crowd-control weapons around the world, from South Korea to Turkey to Panama to Bahrain. In 2013, one of us (MH) helped document the brutal and excessive police response to large-scale peaceful protests in Turkey. PHR's report described the systematic misuse of tear gas, as well as death and injuries of protestors and clearly identified medical personnel from tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, and other kinetic impact projectiles...
Language: en |