Incident details
- Date of incident
- June 9, 2025
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
- Assailant
- Law enforcement
- Was the journalist targeted?
- No
Assault
Police officers at an immigration protest in Los Angeles, California, on June 9, 2025. Photojournalist Ethan Cohen was struck by a ricocheting impact projectile while documenting the demonstration.
Ethan Cohen, a student photojournalist for California State University’s Long Beach Current, was struck in the knee by a police-fired projectile while covering an immigration protest in Los Angeles on June 9, 2025.
It was one of many protests that began June 6 in response to federal raids in and around LA of workplaces and areas where immigrant day laborers gathered, amid the Trump administration’s larger immigration crackdown. After demonstrators clashed with LA 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 LA Mayor Karen Bass. Trump’s deployment of federal troops to LA was ruled illegal by a federal judge on Sept. 2.
Cohen told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that a small rubber pellet, fired by a Los Angeles Police Department officer, bounced off the ground and struck him in the knee. He was not injured and continued working.
While covering another protest a few days later, a piece of shrapnel from a flash-bang grenade fired by a sheriff’s deputy lodged in his forearm.
“It certainly makes it a lot more difficult to be able to capture what we’re trying to capture in those moments,” Cohen said, speaking of the use of crowd-control munitions affecting press at protests.
When reached for comment in June, the LAPD directed the Tracker to the department’s social media accounts. In a June 10 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].
