Police officer who fired rubber pellets at journalists faces felony charges

‘There are no explicable reasons why the alleged actions were taken,’ says prosecutor

A Detroit police corporal is facing felony assault charges amid accusations that he shot rubber pellets at three photojournalists who covered a protest in May against police brutality in the city.

Corporal Daniel Debono was charged on Monday with three counts of felonious assault, which carries a maximum penalty of four years, in the “unprovoked” shooting, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said.

“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,” Kym Worthy, the county prosecutor, said in a statement.

“They were a threat to no one,” she said. “There are simply no explicable reasons why the alleged actions of this officer were taken.”

Efforts to reach Debono on Monday night were unsuccessful. It was unclear whether he had a lawyer. Messages left with the Detroit Police Officers Association, the police union, were not returned on Monday night.

The shooting occurred in the early hours of 31 May, prosecutors said, after the majority of demonstrators, who were protesting the death of George Floyd while in police custody just days earlier, had dispersed.

Nicole Hester, who works for the local news website MLive, and two independent photojournalists, Seth Herald and Matthew Hatcher, were walking when they met Debono, who was dressed in riot gear and armed with his department-issued firearm and a weapon that fired rubber pellets, according to prosecutors. Debono was with two other police officers at Woodward Avenue and State Street. All three journalists had been covering the protest earlier and were wearing press credentials.

The three journalists identified themselves as members of the press “and had their hands up, asking to cross the street,” prosecutors said. But as they began to cross Debono “fired his weapon at them”, striking them all with rubber pellets, prosecutors said.

Ms Hester “sustained the most injuries to her face, neck, arms and legs,” prosecutors said, while Mr Hatcher had bruising on his face and ribs and a mark on his nose. Mr Herald’s wrist was injured.

The Detroit Police Department said that it had begun an investigation as soon as it learned about the encounter and that police chief James E Craig had suspended Debono.

Once the investigation was complete, it was turned over to the prosecutor’s office “for review and charging recommendations,” sergeant Nicole Kirkwood, a spokeswoman for the department, said in an email on Monday.

She said that it was important to note that Debono’s actions did not reflect “the vast majority of the men and women who have been working the protest for the last eight weeks and doing what is right”.

New York Times