Journalist shot with pepper ball by police at anti-police brutality protest

Independent photojournalist Martin Hawk was hit in the neck with a crowd-control munition fired by a Rochester, New York, police officer as he covered a protest against police brutality in the city on Sept. 3, 2020.

The protests were sparked by the Sept. 2 release of police body camera footage of the treatment of Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Black man who died in March 2020 after Rochester police forcefully restrained him during a mental health emergency.

The demonstrations continued for several days, and were among many that occurred across the U.S. during the summer of 2020 in protest of police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Hawk, whose legal name is Reynaldo DeGuzman, is part of an ongoing lawsuit filed as a class action complaint in April 2021 against the city of Rochester and the surrounding county, the police department, other area law enforcement agencies, elected officials and individual officers. The suit alleges a culture of police brutality against people of color and the use of excessive force in response to the protests in the summer of 2020.

On the night of Sept. 3, “The law enforcement response was violent and chaotic. Within hours, Rochester would resemble a war zone,” the complaint stated. Police officers, state troopers and sheriff’s deputies used flash grenades, tear gas and thousands of pepper balls on the crowd, it added.

Hawk, wearing a press badge, attempted to film the police assaulting a protester in a parking lot near the Rochester Police Department headquarters, where protesters had gathered.

However, a supervising officer ordered other police officers to physically block him from recording the event. After the protester was taken into custody and Hawk began walking away, an officer said to the journalist, “A media badge isn’t a free pass.”

The officer then shot Hawk, who is himself Black and Asian American, in the neck with a pepper ball from approximately five feet away, according to the complaint.

Hawk told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he was treated for his injuries by a street medic.

Capt. Gregory Bello, the Police Department’s public information officer, told the Tracker in an email that he was “not aware of any targeted force being used” against Hawk due to his status as a member of the media.

Bello added that it appears that the photojournalist “was in close proximity to a riotous crowd, in which crowd control measures were utilized. The appropriateness of the use of those measures is still being determined in court.”

Hawk was also hit with crowd-control munitions while covering protests on four other days in September 2020.

The Tracker has also documented more than 10 other incidents in which journalists were assaulted or caught in chemical irritants covering the September 2020 protests in Rochester.