On 30 May, a joint patrol of Minneapolis police and Minnesota National Guard personnel

unlawfully shot 37/40mm impact projectiles at people peacefully standing on the front porches
of their homes. The security forces yelled “light them up” before firing. The attack appears to
have been done in retaliation for the people being outside after curfew and videotaping the forces
with their smartphones.
On 1 June, Pennsylvania State Police and City of Philadelphia police confronted a group of
protesters on a highway that runs through the city center. Even after the protesters left the road
bed, police continued to use pepper spray and tear gas to drive the crowd up a steep embankment
and against a high fence.
Lizzie Horne, a rabbinical student who was in that group, described the experience:
“Out of the blue, they started breezing pepper spray into the crowd. There was one officer on the
median who was spraying as well. Then they started with tear gas. Someone who was right in the
front – who had a tear gas canister hit his head – started running back … We were against a big
fence that people had to jump over up a steep hill. The fence was maybe 6 feet tall. People
started putting their hands up – but the cops wouldn’t let up … We were drooling and coughing
uncontrollably … The police started coming up the hill and continued to harass people who were
still on the hill – they were hitting and tackling people. They were dragging people down the hill
and forcing them down on their knees, lining them up kneeling on the median on the highway
with their hands in zip ties – and pulling down their masks and spraying and gassing them
again.”
In Washington, DC, also on 1 June, security personnel from a variety of federal agencies,
including National Park Police and the Bureau of Prisons, plus DC National Guardsmen,
committed a range of human rights violations against protesters in Lafayette Park. These
included misusing a variety of riot control agents, and tossing “stinger ball” grenades, which
contain pepper spray and explode in a concussive flash-bang effect, throwing rubber pellets
indiscriminately in all directions.
The violations were not limited to the largest cities, however. Local police inappropriately used
tear gas against peaceful protesters in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and
Conway, Arkansas, among others. In Iowa City, Iowa, police fired tear gas and threw flash bang
grenades at protesters kneeling and chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot.” In Huntington Beach,
California, police fired pepperballs at protesters lying prone in the street on their stomachs. In
Charlotte, North Carolina, police used tear gas to trap protesters between two tall buildings, and
then shot pepperballs at them from above. During a protest in Salt Lake City, Utah, police held
down a homeless man and shot him in the back with a 37/40mm impact projectile. In Fort
Wayne, Indiana, a local journalist lost his eye when police shot him in the face with a tear gas
grenade.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/usa-unlawful-use-of-force-by-police-at-black-
lives-matter-protests/