LAPD: Video Surfaces Confirming Protesters’ Allegations Police Hit Them With Clubs During Fairfax Demonstration in L.A.

On June 3, Deadline published an article that included first-hand accounts of the protest that occurred in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles on May 30. That article included firsthand accounts from protesters who said things turned violent when police officers began getting physically aggressive with the crowd.

Now, video footage originally taken by How to Get Away with Murder actor Matt McGorry on the day of the protest has been posted online showing LAPD officers using billy clubs to strike protestors who clearly have their hands up. The footage corroborates what the protestors said they witnessed and experienced.

In the video, we can see protestors standing while LAPD officers approach them. The scene takes a turn for the worse when one of the officers starts hitting the protestors with his baton and others follow. In addition, shots are fired but it is unclear whether the ammunition is rubber bullets, with which one of the protesters told Deadline he was struck.

Watch the video below.

In Deadline’s June 3 article, demonstrators who were at the May 30 protest talked about how peaceful marchers were attacked by police. Specifically, Nathan Ramos-Park recalled, “I was not instigating…and I got shot point-blank by a rubber bullet three feet away by a cop,” he said. “He wasn’t scared. He was calm and collected. He took aim and pulled the trigger. I was and still am a peaceful protester.”

“I firmly believe LAPD came in with the intent to be aggressive,” Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright, associate director of BLD PWR, told Deadline. “They were never going to try and de-escalate the situation,” she said. “They wanted to scare us and hurt us. People protest because they need their voices to be heard.”

She added, “We had always intended for the day to be peaceful, and I went in with so much hope that it would be…and I genuinely believe the day would’ve been peaceful if LAPD had not shown up.”

The Fairfax protest is one of many in Los Angeles and around the world that have occurred in response to police brutality, racism and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and numerous members of the black community.