Australian journalist shot with crowd-control munitions at LA protest

Australian journalist Reid Butler says police shot him twice with crowd-control munitions while he was covering a protest against the Trump administration in Los Angeles, California, on June 14, 2025.

The protest in downtown Los Angeles was one of hundreds of “No Kings” demonstrations held nationwide to counter a military parade attended by President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. It also followed days of protests in the city and nearby towns against recent federal raids, part of the Trump administration’s larger immigration crackdown.

Butler, a U.S. correspondent for Australia’s 9News, and his cameraman had been covering the protests since around 12 p.m. that day. The duo were accompanied by two security guards, and the cameraman’s large camera made it clear that they were journalists, Butler told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Butler said the protests were mostly peaceful that day. Then, around 8:30 or 9 p.m., the news crew was reporting in downtown LA when some protesters started throwing things at the police, and officers began shooting crowd-control munitions at the demonstrators. Butler said he doesn’t recall hearing a dispersal order or warning from the police before they started shooting.

Butler and his team were about one block from the police line, he said, and as the munitions started to reach them, he said they decided to leave the area.

“We were then choosing to stay quite a bit back from the line of police, knowing that it was obviously poor visibility, and we just didn’t want to be right in front of it all,” Butler said.

As they were leaving, Butler says he was shot once in his left arm and once in the sole of his right foot. Butler’s boot mostly protected his foot, he said, but his arm started bleeding.

“It hurt a lot, obviously,” he said. “It had broken the skin quite badly. It was a crescent-shaped, large cut on my upper arm.”

Butler added that his arm later bruised and now, one month since the incident, it appears to be leaving a scar. Still, Butler told the Tracker he’s glad the injury wasn’t more serious. “I’m just happy that it was just the arm,” he said.

Butler said he hasn’t thought about filing a legal complaint over the incident, largely because he doesn’t think he was intentionally targeted for being a journalist.

“I don’t think there was thought to where they were firing. They didn’t care who they hit,” he told the Tracker. “It was just willy-nilly down the street.”

Butler has reported from protests before, but this time was different, he said. “It was the first time that I’ve been in a protest situation where I realized that being media doesn’t necessarily protect you,” he said.

After being shot, Butler and his team left the area but continued to report from elsewhere in downtown LA. Around 10 p.m., the team was crossing through a parking lot when police in a passing police car shot at them in an apparent effort to disperse them, Butler said. A crowd-control munition struck one of the security guards in the foot, Butler said.

“If they’d asked, we would have told them that we were press. Or if they’d been closer and saw us, they would have seen that we were press,” Butler said. “At that point, we were like, ‘Oh, this is just too much. We’re going to go home.’”

When reached for comment, the LAPD directed the Tracker to the department’s social media accounts. In a June 15 statement posted to X, the department acknowledged that LAPD officers used numerous “less-lethal rounds” when responding to the protests, but did not address the use of munitions against identifiable press.