DETROIT — A Detroit police officer has been charged with shooting three news photographers with rubber bullets during a Black Lives Matter protest in late May.
Cpl. Daniel Debono, 32, is charged with three counts of felony assault in the May 31 incident.
“The evidence shows that these three journalists were leaving the protest area and that there was almost no one else on the street where they were,” Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said Monday in a statement. “They were a threat to no one.”
Debono pleaded not guilty Thursday at his arraignment.
Debono was suspended and an internal investigation launched following the alleged crime, which Worthy said took place as MLive photographer Nicole Hester, 30, and freelance photographers Seth Herald, 28, and Matthew Hatcher, 29, were leaving a protest in downtown Detroit late May 30, five days after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd’s death, for which four former police officers have been charged, has sparked daily protests against police brutality in hundreds of cities across the U.S.
In several cities, reporters and photographers have been arrested or injured while covering the unrest. Linda Tirado, a freelance journalist, was left permanently blind in one eye after being hit in the face with a rubber bullet on May 30 in Minneapolis.
The projectile broke the goggles she was wearing and injured her eye.
“There’s no way that they could have mistaken me – with a professional camera – for anything but working press,” Tirado told CNN last month.
Hester, Herald and Hatcher were similarly identifiable in Detroit when, sometime after midnight on May 31, they headed out of the protest area. The majority of the protesters had left when the photographers encountered Debono and two other police officers.
“They identified themselves as members of the press and had their hands up, asking to cross the street,” Worthy said. “As the three began to cross the street, it is alleged that defendant Debono fired his weapon at them, striking all three with rubber pellets.
“The shooting was unprovoked.”
MLive reported that Hester was struck by as many as a dozen pellets. One of the pellets narrowly missed her eye, the news site said.
Herald, who is Hester’s fiancé, had injuries to his face and ribs and Herald’s wrist was injured, Worthy’s statement said. Hester was working on assignment for AFP and Herald, for Getty Images, MLive reported.
Worthy said at no time did the photographers do anything to warrant being fired upon.
“There are simply no explicable reasons why the alleged actions of the officer were taken,” the prosecutor said.
Detroit police Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood told The Associated Press on Monday that it is important not to “pain an entire organization with a broad brush.”
“The actions of this officer should not reflect the vast majority of the men and women who have been working and responded to the protest appropriately for the last (eight) weeks,” Kirkwood told the AP in an email.
The Detroit News reported that Debono, who has taken a job in Texas since his suspension, was released on $10,000 bond after his arraignment. He will have to ask a judge for permission to leave Michigan while awaiting trial.
The felony assault charges against him each carry a penalty of up to four years in prison if he is convicted.
John Hiner, vice president of content for MLive Media Group, said it is “outrageous that a police officer fired on working journalists who were doing their jobs.”
“Journalists have a right and an obligation to be on the scene of breaking news, without being targeted,” Hiner said in a statement May 31. “These journalists had credentials, identified themselves and were not posing any threat.”
Hester told the site all three reporters also had their camera gear hanging from their necks when they approached the officers. She said during the confrontation, an officer said, “Maybe you’ll write the truth someday, lady.”
Herald said the trio had to detour for more than 30 minutes to navigate back to the parking garage where their vehicles were. When they arrived, they found themselves facing another line of police officers.
“The officer looked at us and said, “I guess I’ll let you pass but if I see your faces again, I’m locking you up,” Herald told MLive.
Hester, who described the media as first responders, wondered aloud what more could have been done to stop the incident from happening.
“What else am I supposed to do to identify myself, and will it even matter?” she said.
As of Wednesday, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of Freedom of the Press and the Committee to Protect Journalists, had recorded more than 77 arrests, 125 tear-gassings, 34 pepper spray attacks and at least 124 rubber bullets striking reporters since May 26, when the protests began.