WASHINGTON (CN) — Spanning the width of H Street, a line of baton-carrying police officers in riot gear marched on a throng of protesters and members of the media in an area outside the White House that had been christened Black Lives Matter Plaza. As smoke from stun grenades and other munitions filled the air, the barricade along the facade of St. John's Episcopal Church meant that protesters were penned in.
Coughing, disoriented and terrified, Bryan Dozier says he took the camera he had been using to film the demonstration and ran east, only to be lifted up off the ground by one of the officers and returned to the smoke-infused melee.
"Mr. Dozier struggled to breathe as he moved through the chemical irritants. He continued to cough, his nose ran, and he felt burning across his face."
The story is one of two told in a federal complaint Thursday filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of photojournalists hit with chemically weapons while attempting to document the Black Lives Matter protests in Washington this time last year.
“Last summer, police turned D.C.’s streets into a war zone,” Oyoma Asinor, the other photojournalist plaintiff, said in a statement regarding the lawsuit. “I found a voice photographing protests against police brutality but ended up fleeing it myself.”
The protest Asinor and Dozier were attempting to film was held on August 29, 2020 — part of a movement sweeping the globe in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other unarmed Black civilians.
Weeks earlier, the D.C. Council had banned officers from using chemical irritants and stun grenades at such protests.
Asinor says he was hit by chemical irritants during another demonstration on Aug. 30, then forced face-down on the ground and handcuffed by an officer who ignored his protests that he was a member of the press.
Even after officers released Asinor the next morning, they refused to return his cellphone camera and goggles for nearly a full year.
“The fact that MPD attacked, arrested me, and then held my camera for nearly a year for no reason sends a chilling message to everyone of what is at risk when they attend these demonstrations,” Asinor said, using an abbreviation for the Metropolitan Police Department.
While Asinor tried to get his equipment back numerous times, he says it took the ACLU getting involved for the police to comply. By then, he had already bought a new camera and phone.
Megan Yan, an attorney for the ALCU, said in a phone interview that there was no lawful basis for the police department to keep Asinor’s things.
“There is no reason they couldn’t have returned his stuff a lot earlier,” Yan said.
The complaint notes that Asinor's work has run in the Washington Post, and Dozier's in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Guardian and Time magazine. Several of Dozier's photos from the Aug. 29 protest are included in an album that the ACLU has shared on Flickr.
Yan explained that not only did the photojournalists suffer burning, difficulty breathing, terror and disorientation during the protests, but they continue to suffer long-term effects from the distress that they went through on those nights.
“They now suffer emotional distress and anxiety over loud noises,” Yan said. “Asinor steers away from Black Lives Matter Plaza because of the memories it brings up, and it's one of the reasons he decided to stop attending protests.”
Yan added that Asinor also has a constant fear that he is being surveilled by the police.
“This type of violence, this type of attack, really affected their mental health and it has been upsetting to see,” Yan remarked.
The 27-page complaint is directed at eight officers in particular, who are captured in photos and video footage. Yan says that through the legal process, the ACLU hopes to identify the officers and hold them accountable.
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