Photojournalist hit with crowd-control munitions at BLM protest

Independent photojournalist Martin Hawk was hit with pepper ball rounds fired by officers as he covered a protest against police brutality in Rochester, New York, on Sept. 2, 2020.

The protests were sparked by the release earlier that day 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, who is himself Black and Asian American, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he was wearing a press badge and documenting protests taking place outside Rochester Police Department headquarters when he was hit.

Police had called in state troopers and sheriff’s deputies, and were pepper-spraying and shooting pepper balls at protesters.

“I was shot in the neck while my camera was facing one of the unarmed protesters,” he said. “I was shot at pretty point-blank range, less than three yards.”

Hawk said he received care from a street medic and another journalist at the scene, and couldn’t move his head to the left for a few days after being hit. He added that he was hit several times throughout the night.

The photojournalist, 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.

Among the violations listed in the complaint, it details how the photojournalist was targeted and shot with pepper balls at least twice “in retaliation for documenting law enforcement officers’ response to the peaceful protests.”

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