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A video of a West Hollywood woman documenting a nasty moment during a protest against a recent ice attack in Los Angeles goes viral, raising new questions about police use of force and crowd control tactics.
Video captured by Alexandria Augustine along Third Avenue shows a woman approaching the line of law enforcement officer skirmishes as officers appear to fire a less-than-fatal round at her without visible provocation.
“They tell her to move, but that’s a public sidewalk,” Augustine heard Shot said the moment before he was fired. “Look if they shoot her… that’s a mess.”
Augustine told reporters that she had brief conversations with the woman before the incident. “She said she was just trying to get home,” Augustine said. “She had nothing to her. She just looked like she was passing through.”
A few seconds later, as seen in the video, the officer appears to turn down his flashlight – and another fire that Augustine says is a rubber bullet hitting the woman in her abdomen.
The sound of the shot is followed by an audio of a woman moaning in pain as the bystander rushes to her aid. “She’s not doing anything!” I hear him scream.
He was actively and aggressively in documenting protest responses in Los Angeles, and expressed concern about how officers deploy crowd-control weapons.
“I think the biggest misconception here is that these rubber bullets are not fatal,” she said. “They can still cause fatal injuries.”
In a statement to the KTLA, the Los Angeles Police Department said it could not confirm whether officers on the video are LAPD based solely on footage. However, the department emphasized that all use cases, including less fatal ammunition, will be investigated.
At a press conference Friday, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell did not address the video directly, but said that the ongoing review would assess potential training, tactics and equipment failures.
“These cases are being investigated in depth,” McDonnell said. “We see and see. Are there any training issues? Are there any non-fatal issues that need to be addressed?”
But Augustine believes that what’s going on in the streets of LA shows deeper concern.
“It’s really hard to benefit from doubt,” she said. “What’s happening in Los Angeles right now is testing how much people will forgive.”
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