After police brutality protests erupted across the country last year, a federal judge has ruled that an Ohio police department is no longer allowed to use tear gas, and other less lethal measures, against nonviolent demonstrators.
The judge’s decision comes nearly a year after protests against police brutality of people of color were met by police in riot gear. When protesters violently clashed with police officers — or when officers decided it was time to put an end to a nonviolent protest — police department often resorted to riot control agents like tear gas.
Such riot control chemicals have been banned from conventional warfare for nearly 30 years, but remain in the arsenals of police departments across the country.
Researches are also studying if tear gas has negative effects on women’s reproductive systems.
Federal judge bans Columbus Police from using tear gas
A Federal judge in Ohio has temporary ruled that the Columbus Police Department cannot target nonviolent protesters with tear gas and other less lethal tactics used by many of America’s police forces.
Chief U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley wrote in an 88-page preliminary injunction on Friday — which favored 26 plaintiffs who participated in protests last summer — that members of the Columbus Police Department disregarded the First Amendment rights of protesters and that the case was a “sad tale of police officers, clothed with the awesome power of the state, run amok,” The Columbus Dispatch reported.
- Marbley’s decision also forces Columbus police to use body and vehicle cameras when interacting with nonviolent protesters and ensures officers — even while in riot gear — are able to be identified by either their badge number or identity card, according to the Dispatch.
- The injunction also restrains Columbus police officers from using less lethal methods such as rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades and batons against nonviolent protesters, Columbus’ NBC 4 reported.
- The judge’s decision defines “nonviolent protesters” as “individuals who are chanting, verbally confronting police, sitting, holding their hands up when approaching police, occupying streets or sidewalks, and/or passively resisting police orders.”
Last summer, protests against police brutality were spurred by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Americans of color who were killed by police in 2020.
In a statement, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said the city’s response to the protests “fell short” and that Ohio’s capital city had “already implemented changes that address most, if not all, of the orders in the court’s decision so that residents can feel safe in expressing their First Amendment rights in a nonviolent way,” NBC 4 reported.
Outlawed on battlefields, legal in America’s streets
The U.S. military is prevented from using tear gas on the battlefield, although the country’s police forces have embraced tear gas as a way to disperse protesters and rioters.
In 1993, the Geneva Convention — a collection of treaties and protocols that outlines humanitarian rules of warfare — was updated to include “riot control agents” to list of the chemical weapons prohibited during conventional conflicts.
- The Chemical Weapons Convention, which was opened Jan. 13, 1993, has been joined by “189 nations, representing about 98% of the global population,” according to the United Nations.
- “The CWC is the first disarmament agreement negotiated within a multilateral framework that provides for the elimination of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction under universally applied international control,” reported the U.N.
- “However the CWC lays out an exception for law enforcement to use things like tear gas for ‘domestic riot control purposes,’” The Verge reported.
Is tear gas hurting women?
Scientists have begun to research if tear gas, like what was used in Columbus and other American cities last summer, will have more than short-term effects on its citizens.
A study of people who were exposed to tear gas during protests in Portland, Oregon, last summer found that a large percentage women and transgender men “had experienced abnormal menstrual cycles,” The New York Times reported.
Britta Torgrimson-Ojerio — a researcher and nurse from the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland — found that “more than 54% of the respondents who potentially menstruate” claimed to have had abnormal menstrual cycles after coming in contact with tear gas, reported the Times.
- “Even though we cannot say anything scientifically definitive about these chemical agents and a causal relationship to menstrual irregularities,” Torgrimson-Ojerio told the Times, “we can definitively say that in our study most people who had menstrual cycles or a uterus reported menstrual irregularities after reporting exposure to tear gas.”
- French molecular biologist Alexander Samuel is also researching the the topic after protesters in France reported irregular menstrual cycles, according to The New York Times.