Dallas police have injured protesters with 'less-lethal' ammo. This Texas bill would ban its use.

In the summer of 2020, several people in Dallas were seriously injured by what is known as less-lethal ammunition. The ammo was fired by police officers in a supposed attempt to control protesters like those who had gathered in streets across the country to protest police brutality Officers fired less-lethal ammunition like rubber bullets or sponge rounds into the crowds of protesters. Less-lethal ammunition is essentially designed to incapacitate, not kill. But, it can cause permanent damage, and it did so in the summer of 2020. A local photojournalist named Vincent Doyle, for example, was shot in the face by a sponge/rubber bullet while he covered a protest in Dallas in May 2020. The round smashed Doyle’s left cheek bone, and left him with about 40% vision in his left eye. Around the same time, a Dallas protester named Brandon Saenz was also struck in the face by a less-lethal round. The shot fractured Saenz’s facial bones, knocked out several teeth and caused him to lose an eye. A bill filed in Texas this week could spell the end of law enforcement’s use of less-lethal ammunition.

Rep. Erin Zwiener, a Hays County Democrat, filed the bill that would prohibit police from using less-lethal ammunition to control crowds. According to Zwiener’s bill, House Bill 974, less-lethal ammunition includes those commonly known as rubber bullets, wooden bullets, sponge rounds and bean bag rounds. “Each law enforcement agency in this state shall adopt a policy on crowd control that prohibits a peace officer appointed or employed by the agency from using less lethal projectiles as a means to control the activity or movement of a gathering of people,” HB 974 says. Zwiener didn’t respond to a request for comment. She filed a similar bill last year that aimed to ban the use of less-lethal bean bags, but it never made it out of committee. Municipalities across the country are having similar discussions about whether or not cops should be allowed to use less-lethal munitions. As in Dallas, officers with the Oakland Police Department and Alameda County Sheriff’s office in California responded to the 2020 protests with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. The rubber bullets struck two protesters, who sued the California law enforcement agencies in federal court. As part of the settlement of the suit, Alameda County agreed to ban the use of rubber bullets, bean bags and other forms of less-lethal ammunition for crowd control.