NY Times reporter hit by crowd-control munition during LA protest

Livia Albeck-Ripka, a reporter for The New York Times, was struck by a round of crowd-control munitions while covering an immigration enforcement protest on June 8, 2025, in downtown Los Angeles, California, the newspaper reported.

The protests began June 6 in response to federal raids in and around Los Angeles of workplaces and areas where immigrant day laborers gathered, amid the Trump administration’s larger immigration crackdown. After demonstrators clashed with Los Angeles law enforcement officers and federal agents, President Donald Trump called in the California National Guard and then the U.S. Marines over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

In a video posted to the Times website, Albeck-Ripka said that around midnight, she saw a line of officers, who very quickly began firing crowd-control munitions in her direction.

“I was hit below my rib cage. It was a pretty intense, instant pain. I felt winded,” she said. “I was really lucky because I was not seriously injured. I just have a nasty bruise.”

Albeck-Ripka acknowledged in the video that there had been some incidents of violence by individuals who lit cars on fire and threw rocks and scooters, but said that the majority of protesters were peaceful.

“In the instance that munitions were fired at myself and my colleagues, there were very few people on the street,” she said. “It was very late at night, and we were standing quite some distance from the officers.”

Albeck-Ripka did not specify which law enforcement agency deployed the shots, or whether she and her colleagues were targeted by the officers for being media members. Albeck-Ripka did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In statements issued to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, some of the local and federal agencies at the protest urged caution for journalists covering these events, defended their actions against threats of violence and emphasized training officers to respect the rights of clearly identified press.