New Orleans chief: Rubber projectiles fired at protesters

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The New Orleans police chief acknowledged Monday that police fired rubber balls at protesters on a Mississippi River bridge last week, and apologized for having said otherwise at a news conference the following morning.

Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said the commanding officer at the scene of the Wednesday night disturbance did not give an order to use the projectiles. He said an investigation has begun into why the rubber rounds were used and why he was not initially informed before a news conference last Thursday.

That’s when Ferguson had defended the use of tear gas against protesters who tried to cross a police line and cross the Crescent City Connection bridge, while denying that rubber bullets or other projectiles were used.

“We’re trying to identify where is the breakdown,” Ferguson said. “We have to identify what action occurred and what triggered it.”

He repeated that the police department’s force investigation team, formed amid numerous reforms implemented in recent years, was looking into the incident.

He said it would be ”premature” to say he was lied to about the use of rubber projectiles.

Ferguson referred to projectiles used as rubber balls and “stinger rounds.”

“Stinger” is a brand name for rubber balls, of various sizes, used in crowd control, but it was unclear if Ferguson was referring to the specific brand. The police public affairs office, in answer to an emailed query, said it would release more information Tuesday.

The use of tear gas and the arrest of five people on Wednesday night followed a series of what had been largely peaceful demonstrations in New Orleans sparked by the Minneapolis police custody death of George Floyd.

Ferguson had defended the use of tear gas. At Thursday’s livestreamed news conference, he said police had been cooperative with protesters, even letting one leader use police public address systems on the bridge to address the crowd.

Ferguson opened Monday’s news conference by offering “a formal apology to the city, to our citizens,” for saying only tear gas had been used. “I received information that we deployed tear gas and tear gas only on Wednesday night.”

In Baton Rouge on Monday, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards called the use of tear gas on protesters last week reasonable, but he didn’t comment Monday on the rubber projectiles, citing the ongoing investigation.

“Really until that investigation is concluded, I’m not going to get in front of it,” the Democratic governor said.

Edwards has repeatedly praised protesters around Louisiana for demonstrating peacefully, and he said concerns that demonstrators have expressed about police use of force are “entirely legitimate.”

New Orleans continues to implement reforms under a federal court agreement reached with the U.S. Justice Department. That agreement, reached after former Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2010, was the culmination of decades of recurring scandals and complaints of police violence.

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Associated Press reporter Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.