Washington DC (12 AUG 2021) Read the full article ACLU sues DC, police officers over tactics used on journalists covering BLM protests
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Washington, D.C., government and a group of Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers who allegedly used chemical irritants and stun grenades on photojournalists and racial justice protesters last August.
MPD flagrantly used tactics that D.C. laws explicitly ban,” adding, “It’s especially ironic that MPD responded to these demonstrations with the kind of violence that the protestors were protesting.”
Megan Yan, an attorney with the ACLU’s D.C. office
Filed on behalf of photojournalists Oyoma Asinor and Bryan Dozier, The lawsuit argues MPD officers who responded to protests at Black Lives Matter Plaza on Aug. 29 and Aug. 31 used “batons, deployed chemical irritants and stun grenades against demonstrators.”
The civil rights organization said the incidents came just weeks after “the D.C. Council had unanimously banned officers from using these weapons to disperse demonstrations.” (The emergency police reform bill signed by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser [D] in late July 2020).
