Shot in the head and face at LA 'No Kings' protest, 2 young men are now seeking justice

LOS ANGELES - Micah Moore, a film production assistant, recently underwent his second surgery to restore the hearing in his right ear after being shot in the head with a rubber bullet while attending the "No Kings" protest in downtown Los Angeles last June.

"It really completely flipped huge parts of my life upside down," the 25-year-old told the Los Angeles Times. "It's been very disabling at work, with friends, with family - a lot of sleepless nights."

During a similar protest rally in March, Tucker Collins, an 18-year-old University of Southern California student, was blinded in one eye after being shot with a "less-lethal projectile" that struck him in the face.

Both young men are now seeking justice for their injuries, with Moore filing a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department because he hasn't identified the agency responsible for his injury. Collins filed a federal claim last month against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a precursor to filing a federal civil rights lawsuit against the agency.

The two men are among several who say they were innocent victims of excessive force used by federal and local authorities during the immigration raids and the protests that followed.

Behind the demand for justice is attorney James DeSimone, who represents both Moore and Collins. His law firm has also represented at least 15 people who say they were injured by federal or local agents during protests and raids since last June, including a guitar player whose finger was shattered and a 79-year-old car wash owner who was slammed to the ground and suffered a brain bleed.

The LAPD and Sheriff's Department didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. A Homeland Security spokesperson declined to address Collins' accusations but instead issued a statement, saying a group of about 1,000 protesters surrounded the federal building in Los Angeles during the March protests and "threw rocks, bottles, and cement blocks at officers." Seven warnings were given "before the deployment of crowd control measures," according to the statement.

Collins and Moore say they weren't provoking police when they were each shot. They also denied hearing any dispersal orders or warnings before they were injured.

"Right before I was shot, there was an officer who walked up to a group [of protesters] standing near the fence and sprayed them with mace," Collins said. "To me, it can't be described as anything other than instigating the crowd so they can later justify the use of force they used to instigate the crowd. It's circular reasoning to justify the excessive violence."

When Moore headed to Los Angeles City Hall last June, the crowds around him weren't violent as he took part in the "No Kings" protest - one of many nationwide demonstrations aimed at challenging the Trump administration and its policies.

Moore got there around 5 p.m., chanted with the rest of the crowd and recorded some footage on his cellphone. The protesters were peaceful around him and some of them held up signs, he said. As Moore was turning away to leave, a law enforcement agent shot him directly in the face with a rubber bullet.

Moore immediately lost all hearing in his right ear and started bleeding. Someone in the crowd applied a bandage to his head and he was quickly taken to an emergency room.

After surgery last week to try to regain his hearing, Moore is in a painful recovery process with no certainty that his hearing will return, his attorney said.

Moore said he is now terrified of taking part in any protests. "I'm constantly uneasy because what warning signs can you look for if all the rules were being followed and I was still shot?" he said.

During the March 28 rally outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A. - the site where many anti-ICE protests have converged - Collins said he was taking photos when he was shot in the eye.

Collins said that after he was shot, agents began deploying tear gas, which further irritated his throat and eyes.

"These weapons can be aimed and are very precise, so there was some reasoning that they were shooting at head level, that they were shooting in my direction and there was no one around me," he said. "The only other people were people with their cameras taking videos and photos. I'm inclined to believe that it had to do with why I was shot."

DeSimone said that the LAPD has reached out to them in order to launch an internal investigation.

"There has to be consequences, both within the department and for discipline and termination where necessary," DeSimone added. "As well as realistic criminal investigation when they've committed a crime in violation of a penal code."

DeSimone said he intends to argue that the shootings of his clients in the head with rubber bullets violated the California penal code, which prohibits using projectiles and chemical agents as crowd dispersal except "to defend against a threat to life or serious bodily injury."

Last year, federal judges issued preliminary injunctions restricting Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from using tear gas, pepper-ball munitions and other less-lethal projectiles against protesters, banning the targeting of the head, neck or torso, except when deadly force is justified.

Both Moore and Collins said that their injuries have affected their work and studies. Both said they will continue protesting despite what happened to them.

"This is how governments escalate from small oppressed groups into larger and larger groups that are deemed a problem," Moore said. "I went out to protest not because I was personally targeted by ICE but because others in the community were. Now that I have been personally targeted, people reading this should see that not as an erosion of my civil liberties but as a threat to their own."

Collins said that, despite his injury, he feels a duty to attend future protests.

"This has only proven to me why it's even more important to have people documenting what's going on," he said. "If there wasn't someone who captured video of when I was shot, it would be so much harder for me to seek justice for what has happened."

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