WASHINGTON – The debate over the use of force to clear Lafayette Square on Monday minutes before President Donald Trump posed nearby for a photograph has increasingly centered on whether police deployed tear gas in their effort to remove protesters.
Government agencies and protesters calling attention to the death of George Floyd are at odds over whether the chemical irritant deployed near the White House wastear gas, or something else. Trump is using the debate totargetthe media and undermine coverage of the controversial use of force.
At issue is the decision Monday to clear protesters from Lafayette Square, a historic park, so Trump could stroll from the White House to St. John’s Church and pose for photos with senior aides. Critics say the move, made before the city’s curfew, resulted in lawful protesters being dispersed so the president could take part in a “photo op.”
Trump’s supporters and one of the law enforcement agencies involved said that the clearing was justified and that the protesters were “violent.”Multiple journalists observing the protests, including a team from USA TODAY, said the protesters were demonstrating peacefully before the police moved pushed forward.
But much of theunderlying debate over whether the police used excessive force and whether protesters should have been cleared in the first place has been lost in the argument over tear gas, which Trump supporters aggressively pushed.
Here is what to know about the incident, including the dispute over tear gas.
What the feds said happened
The U.S.Park Police, one of the law enforcement agencies involved with clearing the park on Monday,denied using tear gas. But the agency acknowledged using “pepper balls,” another chemical irritant that causes people to tear up and cough.
The agency also said it used “smoke canisters.”
But the Park Police was only one of the agencies involved. Others, including the Secret Service and the D.C. National Guard, have declined to say what tactics or munitions they deployed to clear the park on Monday night.
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What is a pepper ball?
A pepper ball is a projectile that contains chemicals, like pepper spray, that would irritate the eyes and lungs. Such a combination with smoke canisters would create clouds of a chemical irritant that would cause tearing.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that “tear gas” and “riot control agents” are terms that can be used interchangeably. On its website, the agency also states that “pepper spray” is a “riot control agent.”
“Riot control agents (sometimes referred to as ‘tear gas’) are chemical compounds that temporarily make people unable to function by causing irritation to the eyes, mouth, throat, lungs, and skin,” the CDC’s website reads, mentioning pepper spray specifically.
But others point to a technical distinction between the two. Pepper spray is a natural extract from pepper plants. Tear gas is generally what’s used to describe a man-made chemical, and is often known to law enforcement as CS gas.
“Some people do use these terms interchangeably, but they are different products,” said Dr. Kelly Johnson-Arbor, co-medical director of the National Capital Poison Center.
With that said, Johnson-Arbor said the distinction is somewhat limited in practice. The two products cause similar symptoms. Both are chemical irritants that can causing tearing, coughing and sometimes vomiting. Those symptoms were reported from protesters who were cleared from the park on Monday.
Johnson-Arbor said she probably would be unable to tell the difference if one or the other was used on her.
“In terms of what they do clinically, they do many of the same things,” she said.
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How it’s being used
Trump’s campaign is using the incident to suggest the media overstated what happened on Monday and is demanding corrections from outlets that used the words “tear gas” in coverage. USA TODAY was among several outlets that used the term.
“It’s said that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on. This tear gas lie is proof of that,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh. “For nearly an entire day, the whole of the press corps frantically reported the ‘news’ of a tear gas attack on ‘peaceful’ protesters in Lafayette Park, with no evidence to support such claims.”
White House officials continued to raise the point Wednesday.
“No tear gas was used,” White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany “No one was tear-gassed. … There’s been a lot of misreporting.”
Journalists on the scene and protesters reported seeing chemical irritants deployed and said they experienced symptoms such as coughing and watering eyes as authorities sought to move the protesters back. They also dismissed the claim the protesters were being violent at the time of their forceful removal.
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What photo and video evidence showed
Nathan Baca, a reporter for CBS affiliate WUSA, posted a photograph of a gas canister he said he picked up at the protests Monday. . The canister was labeledOC gas, a form of pepper spray.
The Rev. Gini Gerbasi, the rector at a different St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C., described a peaceful afternoon in a viral Facebook post.
“They started using tear gas and folks were running at us for eyewashes or water or wet paper towels. At this point, Julia, one of our seminarians for next year (who is a trauma nurse) and I looked at each other in disbelief,” she wrote.
“I was coughing, her eyes were watering, and we were trying to help people as the police – in full riot gear – drove people toward us,” she wrote.
A Reuters video showing a portion of the standoff shows none of the provocation described by Park Police until after police moved forward.
Neither the police nor the White House have provided evidence to back up their claims that protesters were hiding weapons like glass bottles, bats, and metal poles near the park..
Washington, D.C. MayorMuriel Bowser called it “shameful” that federal police forcefully removed the protesters before the curfew.
Trump’s event at the church
Trump’s event at the fire-damaged church, which critics described as a “photo op,” drew swift condemnation from top church officials, Democrats, some of his GOP colleagues.
‘I am outraged’: DC bishop denounces Trump’s church visit after police clear protesters
The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington excoriated Trump for his visit to St. John’s Church.
“Let me be clear: The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese without permission as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our churches stand for,” Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde told CNN.
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In addition to National Guard units, Attorney General William Barr referred to a long list of federal forces he said would be on site near the White House.
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Among them: the FBI; the Secret Service; the U.S. Park Police; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the U.S. Marshals Service; the U.S. Capitol Police; at least two Department of Homeland Security agencies; the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and “others.”
Contributing: Jeanine Santucci, David Jackson, Michael Collins, Nicholas Wu, Kevin Johnson.
Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/03/floyd-protests-tear-gas-used-clear-park-trumps-walk/3128855001/
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