Injuries from less-lethal weapons during the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis

Abstract

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd died at the hands of police. Worldwide demonstrations against racial inequities ensued. In the face of a pandemic, the George Floyd protests had an estimated participation of more than 15 million people, making it one of the largest protests to date in the United States.

Throughout these protests, law enforcement used less-lethal weapons as a method of crowd control despite evidence of associated injuries and death. Systematic reviews of cases in which patients were treated for injuries caused by these weapons have shown that 1.3% received permanently disabling injuries from chemical irritants and 15.5% received such injuries from projectiles. However, the majority of the studies were from outside the United States. Law enforcement in the United States has used less-lethal weapons for decades, but injury reports have only recently emerged. Therefore, we conducted a retrospective analysis involving patients injured by less-lethal weapons who were treated in two large Minnesota hospital systems during the George Floyd protests.