Journalist shot with pepper ball while filming BLM protest

Independent photojournalist Martin Hawk was hit with a pepper ball fired by law enforcement as he covered a protest against police brutality in Rochester, New York, on Sept. 12, 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. throughout 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. 12, Hawk, who is himself Black and Asian American, was filming a protest taking place near the Rochester Police Department’s Special Operations Division office and wearing press identification on both sides of his plate carrier — a type of body armor. Rochester police officers, Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies and New York State Police officers were at the scene to confront the protesters.

According to the complaint, the journalist “was targeted and shot with a pepper ball in the right shoulder” by officers at around 11 p.m.

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 Mr. DeGuzman due to his status as a member of the media.”

He added, “It appears Mr. DeGuzman 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 documented more than 10 other assaults on journalists covering the September 2020 protests in Rochester.