Photojournalist hit with projectiles, camera damaged at BLM protest

Independent photojournalist Martin Hawk was hit multiple times with crowd-control munitions fired by police officers and had his camera damaged while covering a protest against police brutality in Rochester, New York, on Sept. 4, 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, who is himself Black and Asian American, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he had press identification on both sides of a plate carrier — a type of body armor he wore — and was carrying professional cameras and equipment.

Along with other clearly marked journalists, he was documenting around 3,000 protesters who were marching across Rochester’s Court Street Bridge.

The Rochester Police Department erected a barricade on one end of the bridge, effectively penning many protesters in, then ordered them to disperse. Seconds later, they began firing pepper balls and chemical irritants into the crowd.

Hawk told the Tracker that “there was a specific detachment of RPD officers that were firing directly at the press,” seemingly to push them back. He added that his Sony a6500 camera became disabled because too much of the pepper-ball material targeted his way got into the gaskets.

The photojournalist said that he and other members of the crowd were pushed from the bridge to a parking garage about two blocks away. Police and state law enforcement officers were assembled on the upper floors of the parking structure, firing impact projectiles down.

Hawk was hit at that time by a pepper ball in the arm. He said throughout the day, however, he was hit numerous times with crowd-control munitions. “I was shot, in particular, in the legs. It seemed like they were really shooting at the legs.”

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 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.

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.”

Bello 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.