Inside the protesters’ encampment at UCLA, beneath the glow of hanging flashlights and a deafening backdrop of exploding flash-bangs, OB-GYN resident Elaine Chan suddenly felt like a battlefield medic.
Police were pushing into the camp after an hours-long standoff. Chan, 31, a medical tent volunteer, said protesters limped in with severe puncture wounds, but there was little hope of getting them to a hospital through the chaos outside. Chan suspects the injuries were caused by rubber bullets or other “less lethal” projectiles, which police have confirmed were fired at protesters.
“It would pierce through skin and gouge deep into people’s bodies,” she said. “All of them were profusely bleeding. In OB-GYN we don’t treat rubber bullets. … I couldn’t believe that this was allowed to be [done to] civilians — students — without protective gear.”
The UCLA protest, which gathered thousands in opposition to Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza, began in April and grew to a dangerous crescendo this month when counterprotesters and police clashed with the activists and their supporters.
In interviews with KFF Health News, Chan and three other volunteer medics described treating protesters with bleeding wounds, head injuries, and suspected broken bones in a makeshift clinic cobbled together in tents with no electricity or running water. The medical tents were staffed day and night by a rotating team of doctors, nurses, medical students, EMTs, and volunteers with no formal medical training.
At times, the escalating violence outside the tent isolated injured protesters from access to ambulances, the medics said, so the wounded walked to a nearby hospital or were carried beyond the borders of the protest so they could be driven to the emergency room.
“I’ve never been in a setting where we’re blocked from getting higher level of care,” Chan said. “That was terrifying to me.”
Three of the medics interviewed by KFF Health News said they were present when police swept the encampment May 2 and described multiple injuries that appeared to have been caused by “less lethal” projectiles.
Less lethal projectiles — including beanbags filled with metal pellets, sponge-tipped rounds, and projectiles commonly known as rubber bullets — are used by police to subdue suspects or disperse crowds or protests. Police drew widespread condemnation for using the weapons against Black Lives Matter demonstrations that swept the country after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Although the name of these weapons downplays their danger, less lethal projectiles can travel upward of 200 mph and have a documented potential to injure, maim, or kill.
The medics’ interviews directly contradict an account from the Los Angeles Police Department. After police cleared the encampment, LAPD Chief Dominic Choi said in a post on the social platform X that there were “no serious injuries to officers or protestors” as police moved in and made more than 200 arrests.
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