Tear Gas Almost Every Day
After U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order on October 9 limiting federal agents' use of crowd-control weapons against Illinois protesters, court filings allege that federal agents violated the order 'almost every day,' including a Halloween-eve incident in which children on their way to a school parade were tear-gassed.
#civilian harm #state violence #rule of law
On October 9, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order against federal agents operating under Operation Midway Blitz in Illinois, restricting their use of tear gas, pepper spray, and other “riot control weapons” against protesters and journalists, and barring them from clearing people from public spaces those people had a lawful right to occupy. A subsequent court filing alleges that the order has been violated “almost every day” since it was issued. On October 25, federal agents reportedly deployed tear gas in Chicago’s Old Irving Park as children walked to a Halloween parade at their school. From the bench, on Tuesday, Judge Ellis said: “I can only imagine how terrified they were.”
When the judge asked Customs and Border Protection commander Gregory Bovino to produce all use-of-force reports from agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz since September 2, Bovino said it would be impossible because of “the sheer amount.” The court ordered the reports and accompanying body-camera footage produced by the end of the week. The volume of force itself — too large to assemble — is a piece of evidence that did not exist, in that quantifiable form, before the question was put.