Incident details
- Date of incident
- June 14, 2025
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
- Targets
- Dexter Thomas (Independent)
- Assailant
- Law enforcement
- Was the journalist targeted?
- Unknown
Assault
- Equipment damaged
- Actor
- Law enforcement
Equipment Damage
Journalist Dexter Thomas holds a corner of his camera, which broke off and struck him after it was hit by a police projectile during a “No Kings” protest in Los Angeles, California, on June 14, 2025.
Independent photojournalist Dexter Thomas’s camera was hit with a crowd-control munition, sending a fragment of its shell ricocheting against his leg during a “No Kings” protest in Los Angeles, California, on June 14, 2025.
The protest 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.
Thomas told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he was documenting the protest downtown, away from the main crowd, when the LA Police Department began blocking the road. He said he was wearing a yellow press badge identifying him as a journalist when officers fired an impact projectile into a group of people holding cellphones and cameras.
“They actually shot and hit my camera and actually blew a hole in it,” he said.
A video he later posted to Instagram, captured on a GoPro camera, shows a piece of plastic flying into the air after the projectile strikes his camera. The fragment hit his leg. The following day, Thomas returned to the scene and found the broken piece in a gutter.
“The impact didn’t hurt. All I felt was something tugging sharply on my pants,” he wrote in the Instagram caption.
At the time, he was holding the camera by his waist, near his groin.
The hole in Dexter Thomas’s camera after police fired a projectile at it during a “No Kings” protest in Los Angeles, California, on June 14, 2025.
— SCREENSHOT COURTESY DEXTER THOMAS VIA INSTAGRAM“I’m very fortunate that the camera took the round for me, because that would have hurt a lot,” he told the Tracker.
The digital camera — a Sony A7S — now has a permanent hole in its body, which Thomas has covered with black duct tape.
“If anything gets in there, it will definitely stop functioning,” he said.
Asked 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.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogs press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
