The LAPD fired a weapon that left a man blind in one eye, the lawsuit says

A 23-year-old man accused Los Angeles police of blindfolding him during a protest earlier this year when an officer shot him in the face with a non-lethal weapon, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.

Jesus Javier Islas said he was at a protest against immigration detention near the Metropolitan Detention Center on Jan. 31 in downtown LA when he was shot in the face by a projectile that stained his face and clothes with bright green paint.

Video of the incident shows Islas leaning on the scooter in the middle of Alameda Street when the impact occurred. An explosion of green paint can be seen as Islas stumbles and cries out in pain. The video does not seem to show the confrontation between the police and the protesters that happened nearby when he was beaten.

Hours later, doctors at LA County-USC Medical Center told Islas that he would never see out of his right eye again, according to Islas and his attorney, Jamal Tooson. Police did not try to help at the scene, Tooson said.

“My client was doing nothing wrong. He wasn’t threatening anyone. All of a sudden, the LAPD has ruined his life,” said Tooson, who is seeking $100 million in damages.

The footage does not show the officer firing the weapon and the lawsuit does not allege the officer was responsible. Tooson said he “strongly believes” that Los Angeles police shot his client based on the results of his investigation, and noted the LAPD’s practice of using a weapon that can mark protesters with paint for future arrests.

An LAPD spokeswoman said she could not comment on the proceedings.

The department admitted in a document published on its website Thursday that police used foam batons and a weapon known as the FN 303 against protesters near the detention center that night. Officers fired about a dozen of those rounds, according to the report. Police said the protesters threw stones and explosives while destroying property, according to the report.

The FN 303 has the ability to fire rounds that smear protesters with paint to highlight them for arrest.

The incident happened around 9:40 p.m. and was part of several protests that took place across the city and across the country after ICE agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis nurse who was protesting Trump’s brutal attack on her city.

Islas, who has been diagnosed with autism, maintains that he did nothing to cause trouble that night. He told The Times that he arrived at the protest after work, was there for less than 10 minutes and was just passing by to see a friend when he was shot.

A former avid cyclist, Islas said the incident changed his life in ways that will never change. He has not been able to work or enjoy the hobbies he used to enjoy, and doctors are worried that the problems may affect the vision in his other eye.

“I really started to despise law enforcement after that,” he said during an interview. “I was like these cowards, they took my eye.”

The LAPD’s crowd control tactics have been under scrutiny for decades, and have been the subject of constant criticism since the Trump administration launched a crackdown on immigrants in Los Angeles last summer. Police were filmed last year trampling protesters with horses and aiming non-lethal explosives at protesters’ heads, which is against department policy.

Jesus Javier Gomez Islas has filed a $100 million lawsuit, saying the LAPD is responsible for firing a harmless gunshot that struck him in the face at a protest in January.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

Two weeks before Islas was shot, a judge barred the LAPD from using its preferred weapon of crowd control, the 40mm beanbag. The judge ruled that the officers had repeatedly violated previous court orders that only allowed the weapon to be used to subdue protesters who threatened violence.

Since that decision, the department has widely used the FN 303, a compressed air rifle designed to “incapacitate and immobilize people by inflicting serious trauma on impact,” according to Peter Bibring, a civil rights attorney who has sued the LAPD over its crowd control tactics numerous times.

Bibring reviewed photos of the Islas shooting and could not definitively say that the round that hit him was from the FN 303. He noted that the amount of paint splatter on the Islas was unusual for the weapon’s marking cartridges.

Regardless of the type of weapon used, Bibring said firing any weapon at the bystander’s head qualifies as using deadly force, and nothing in the video shows Islas, or anyone else, threatening.

“Part of the problem is when the department gives the police a weapon and tells them that this is not that dangerous, that it is safer than a gun, which they use in situations where they would not dream of using a gun,” said Bibring.

The incident marks at least the third time this year that anti-ICE protesters have been partially or completely blinded after police used force against them. Two protesters in Santa Ana lost their vision in mid-January after a violent encounter with agents of the US Department of Homeland Security.

“Unfair. Unfair. I don’t think either of those are strong enough words,” Tooson said. “To use this level of power, when they’ve already been accused of this in the past, is crazy.”