APR recently spoke with a person who was involved in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Huntsville. These protests came in the wake of the infamous killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, as Americans across the country called for reforms to address police brutality. The protester, who wished to remain anonymous, was a 23-year-old Huntsville resident and recent college graduate at the time of the protests.

Motivated by the injustice of Floyd’s killing and the mobilization of others in his community, the protester joined a large group of demonstrators to stage a peaceful protest outside the Madison County Courthouse on June 3, 2020.

According to contemporary reports, the demonstration was completely peaceful and no property damage was reported at the time. “People were trying to keep others in check,” the protester told APR. “Making sure they don’t break any rules in case of an accident, like sitting on the sidewalks… there was a lot of chanting (sic), moments of silence…”

However, the protest ended with members of the Huntsville Police Department, Madison Police Department, Madison County Sherrif’s Office and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency forming a blockade and shoot bean bags, rubber bullets and tear gas to the demonstrators. During that violence, the protester claims he was shot with five rubber bullets, one hitting him in the leg and seriously injuring him.

The protester shared images of a deep leg wound, which he initially thought was the result of a ricocheting tear gas canister. After being injured, he left the protest and went to seek treatment at Huntsville Hospital.

According to the protester, the police instigated the violence after the protesters refused to heed orders to disperse. Following the eventsHuntsville Police Chief Mark McMurray called the protesters “anarchists” and blamed the use of force on peaceful demonstrators.

“I kept asking them to leave,” McMurray said at the time. “They brought it on — this group brought it on themselves. They came here to fight, not us.”

The protester told APR that there was no official shutdown in place at the time of the protests. The protester also said that he believes that the police came to the peaceful demonstration with the intention of escalating the situation into violence.

He described running away from the protest after being injured, saying other protesters who saw his wound were “like shocked that it happened, I mean really shocked”.

“We don’t know what caused my leg … for me, for the people around me, they just see this huge cut in my leg and that’s something I don’t think anyone expected,” he said. “I don’t know if even the police expected that level of injury to happen to a protester, but it did.”

“The report talks about an officer who was fired that day and it makes me think, is he the one who shot me with this ‘test and evaluate’ round?” the protester continued, referencing an officer who suggested HPD was using untested ammunition provided by manufacturers during the protest so they could evaluate their effectiveness before the department made an official purchase.

“If so, it could explain why the munitions, if used, were not accounted for in the HPD inventory and why Chief McMurray was unaware of their use,” a statement said. formal report from the Huntsville Police Citizens Advisory Council (HPCAC). “It would not explain, however, why the use of rubber bullets was never reported.”

According to the HPCAC report, the officer who referred to the “testing and evaluation” rounds was later removed from their position within the HPD. However, the report also found that “the bulk of the evidence indicates that only the MCSO prominently used rubber bullets on June 1 and 3.”

The protester went on to describe the lasting effects of his injury.

When he initially visited Huntsville Hospital, the protester told medical professionals he thought he had been hit by a ricocheting tear gas canister. Under this impression, the providers stitched up the entrance wound on his leg, and the protester went home on crutches.

However, the wound did not heal after that initial hospital visit, and the protester continued to rely on crutches to walk for some time. After one or two follow-up appointments over the course of a month, the wound had still failed to heal properly, prompting the protester to seek medical attention again.

After receiving an X-ray at an urgent care center, providers told the protester that the wound was not caused by a ricocheting container, but by a rubber projectile that was still embedded in the leg.

“It really broke my spirit to have this realization come over me… how could I go a whole month without realizing that it’s not getting better, you know?” he said.

The protester then returned to Huntsville Hospital where he underwent surgery to remove the projectile. After surgery, his wound finally began to heal more than a month after he was first injured.

The protester told APR that he was able to continue working while dealing with the injury and that the financial impact was minimal, but that the injury “made life difficult”. In the end, he was thankful the injury wasn’t worse. “It could have been a lot worse,” he said.

The HPCAC report also cites numerous other instances of law enforcement knowingly and intentionally using excessive force against protesters and escalating unilateral violence without reason.

One officer “falsely told another HPD officer that (a) protester was throwing glass bottles from his backpack” after previously confirming that the thrown bottles were not, in fact, glass. That officer fired several less-lethal rounds at the protester in question. The report also mentions an officer who “came down” on protesters who had already been pushed to the ground. Another section notes that officers taunt one of their colleagues for not pepper-spraying a demonstrator.

“One officer was heard saying that he hopes the protest gets on the news and people realize they can’t play in Huntsville because it ‘doesn’t play nice in Huntsville,'” the report added.

The protester ended our conversation by explaining why he felt it was important to continue sharing his story today, more than four years after the protests.

“It’s been four years now and in some ways it’s as fresh as it was then,” he said. “I still think about it a lot.”

He went on to point out how police brutality in America persists to this day as unarmed black Americans continue to die at the hands of law enforcement. Right in July, Sonya Masseya Springfield, IL resident was shot dead in her own home by police after it called him to report a tornado in the area.

“Certainly there have still been unarmed people killed because of incompetence, or negligence, or any number of other more sinister reasons, by law enforcement,” the protester said. “There are people who die every day, and their names are not remembered like George Floyd’s or even Breonna Taylorhis.”

“This is a story that could help re-emerge Black Lives Matter in the Huntsville community or perhaps elsewhere,” he continued.

Additionally, the protester said he was motivated to speak out by the loss of innocent lives he has seen during Israel’s invasion of Gaza over the past year. He believes the American people have a responsibility to protest the “systemic dehumanization and violence against innocent people, whether it’s innocent people in America or innocent Palestinians in Gaza.”

“I wish the protest was more effective, but I think it’s important to communicate when we disagree with what our country is doing,” he said. He expressed that he feels Palestinians face the same lack of empathy and demonization as victims of American police brutality.

He also felt it was important to share his story as we approach Donald Trump’s second term as president, arguing that voices like his are likely to be endangered by Trump’s rhetoric and characterization republicanism of the protesters as so-called “radical leftists”. In 2020, then-President Trump vowed to crack down on Black Lives Matter protests across the country and repeatedly vilified Americans who demonstrated, like those in Huntsville.