Livestreamer shoved across throat by police at Minneapolis protest

Livestreamer Justin Ge Pluto (Goeman) was struck multiple times across the throat by a baton-wielding police officer while covering a protest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 26, 2020.

Demonstrations had begun in the city the day before in response to the police murder of George Floyd, a Black man.

Ge Pluto told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker in February 2025 that he had begun making digital content and podcasts in 2020, and that he felt called to photograph, film and livestream the protests, which he views now as the inception of his identification as a journalist. “You could just feel the weight of the moment” in the city where Floyd had been murdered, he said.

At midmorning May 26, Ge Pluto said he and a group of other journalists had positioned themselves on a side street next to the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct, where protests had been concentrated and where police were setting up a perimeter.

“A few squad cars started coming down this alleyway, telling us to clear out,” Ge Pluto said. A video livestreamed to YouTube by media collective Unicorn Riot shows police officers wielding nonlethal firearms as someone on the tape repeats, “We have our hands up and we have press badges.”

Ge Pluto saw an officer get out of his squad car, “and just something about his vibe and the way he was moving, I just had this feeling that he was coming right at me,” he said.

As captured shortly after the one-hour and 40-minute mark of the livestream, the officer charges at Ge Pluto, shouting “Move, move,” and shoving his baton across Ge Pluto’s throat multiple times. Someone from behind the camera exclaims, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no. You do not need to do that. No. You do not beat the press. He’s press, he’s press. We’re press, too.”

“I was standing over my bike. I tripped over my bike, dropped my phone. My bike and my camera and my phone all got trapped in the perimeter they’d set around this precinct,” Ge Pluto recounted. “The other officers seemed to be telling this guy to chill out. Some of the other journalists were like ‘He’s media, he’s media. Leave him be.’”

Ge Pluto said he was stunned but not hurt by the assault, and didn’t think he’d been targeted as a journalist. “I’m light-skinned, mixed Black and white,” he said, noting that he was the only person of color in the immediate area. “He may have just seen me as a protester. I don’t think he realized I was with this group of journalists.”

Another officer helped Ge Pluto retrieve his equipment from inside the perimeter. His camera lens had been cracked, as had the screen on the phone he’d been using to livestream to Facebook.

Ge Pluto said that his preparations for documenting the protests increased drastically after the incident. “It went from a bike, backpack, and portable battery to a helmet and a bulletproof vest, reflectivity vest, multiple batteries, some personal protection stuff,” he said.

As police officers deployed grenades and rounds of nonlethal ammunition from assault rifles, he said, “It went from recording a peaceful protest to filming in a war zone.”