In 2007, at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, LAPD smashed reporters' cameras, beat them, and shot rubber bullets at them. One colleague showed me his rubber bullet bruise. Started under his left ribcage, with deep purple spread all the way to the right side of his torso
Another colleague of mine and her photographer ended up suing LAPD. One of my colleagues ended up with a traumatic brain injury when a cop hit her with a nightstick. All three of those women are tiny, my size. MacArthur Park is in a bowl shape, which police used to kettle people
I was an LA beat reporter then but wasn't there that day, although I had been observing for some time that protests were getting more and more tense and we all knew that something was going to break. I had that particular day off, which was how I escaped getting caught up in it
(That was under the leadership of Bill "Broken Windows" Bratton, who just popped up for an interview on MSNBC)
A few days after that, I went to another rally that was less violent but no less nasty. I was interviewing a police officer and someone ran out of an alley and threw an M16 at one or both of us. It went off next to my head, and that's why I cannot hear in my right ear to this day
That part isn't really relevant and wasn't the officer's fault (I blame whoever chucked the cherry bomb at me) except that it demonstrates how the ripple effects of violence don't just stop, they ripple and spread. But if you've ever wondered why I can't hear for shit, that's why
lol, M80, not an M16, my brain is fried sorry
Reporters started to call it "the May Day Melee." which I felt was much too cutesy for what actually went down
cbsnews.com/news/lapd-says…
cbsnews.com/news/lapd-says…
I ran into one of the television reporters who had been injured about a year later doing a follow-up story. I hadn't seen her in that long because she had needed to recover from her injuries, and she was still limping too badly to be able to work.
I'm not naming names because, while they're easy to find, it feels like it would violate their privacy and perhaps drag them into some drama. I haven't talked to most of those colleagues in years.
Oh that M80 shit happened live on the air too, when I was a radio reporter for KNX. So if you heard that, now you know.
There are a lot of reasons I criticize the entities I do, and why I have such strong feelings about power dynamics, state violence, structural racism, etc. That is just one of millions of experiences I've had and seen. But my perspectives didn't come out of nowhere.
