DEFENSE
‘What I saw was just absolutely wrong’: National
Guardsmen struggle with their role in controlling protests
POLITICO spoke to 10 National Guardsmen who have taken
part in the protest response across the country since the killing of George
Floyd while in police custody.
By DANIEL
LIPPMAN
06/09/2020
07:03 PM EDT
Pvt.
Si’Kenya Lynch, a member of the D.C. National Guard, was on duty at Lafayette
Square near the White House last Monday when U.S. Park Police cleared the area
of protesters ahead of President Donald Trump’s now-infamous photo op.
Lynch said
she supports the protests, and that her brother was among the demonstrators on
the other side of the line, adding that “he coughed a lot” due to the tear gas
fired into the crowd.
“I was
happy to see him out there ... to walk for me when I couldn’t,” she said,
adding that if she hadn’t been activated as a citizen-soldier, she would have
been among the protesters “to support the people, and I wanted to support what
was right.”
POLITICO
spoke to 10 National Guardsmen who have taken part in the protest response
across the country since the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.
Many Guardsmen said they felt uncomfortable with the way they were used to
handle the unrest because demonstrators lumped them in with the police. They
felt that while they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, their presence
at times intimidated Americans from expressing their opinions and even
escalated the tension.
And in the
case of Guardsmen involved in the Lafayette incident, some felt used.
“As a
military officer, what I saw was more or less really f---ed up,” said one D.C.
Guardsman who was deployed to Lafayette Square last Monday and who, like some
others, spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely. The official line from
the White House that the protesters had turned violent, he said, is false.
“The crowd
was loud but peaceful, and at no point did I feel in danger, and I was standing
right there in the front of the line,” he said. “A lot of us are still
struggling to process this, but in a lot of ways, I believe I saw civil rights
being violated in order for a photo op.
“I’m here
to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and what I just saw
goes against my oath and to see everyone try to cover up what really happened,”
the Guardsman continued. “What I saw was just absolutely wrong.”
Since the
protest on Lafayette Square last Monday, much of the public’s attention has
been focused on the decision to clear the area so Trump, flanked by advisers,
could pose for photos in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church holding a bible.
In the days
following, the debate shifted to whether the police used tear gas to break up
the protests. The White House insisted they didn’t, yet a spokesperson for the
park police later acknowledged to Vox that it was a mistake to be that
definitive, since tear gas is an umbrella term covering a number of chemical
irritants.
One of the
Guardsmen at the scene said the White House isn’t being truthful.
“I’ve been
tear gassed before. I was there the night before when we got tear gassed, there
was tear gas there” on Monday evening, he said. He added that he and some of
his soldiers felt the effects of the tear gas from their colleagues because
they didn’t have masks on.
In a
statement, Capt. Chelsi Johnson, a spokesperson for the D.C. National Guard,
responded to accounts of Guardsmen who had been accidentally affected by tear
gas.
“They were
instructed to put their gas masks on if/when they were ordered to or they
noticed the police were putting theirs on. Every Guardsman was issued a gas
mask,” she said. The U.S. Park Police has acknowledged firing pepper balls into
the crowd, which is also a chemical irritant.
While the
Park Police cleared out the protesters, some Guardsmen said they felt they were
there to actually prevent the police from beating up protesters, instead of the
other way around.
“I felt
that we were more protecting the people from the police,” said D.C. Guardsman
Spec. Isaiah Lynch, who’s unrelated to Si’Kenya Lynch.
DC National
Guard members
A line of
D.C. National Guard members stand in Lafayette Park as demonstrators gather to
protest. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo
The event
has taken a toll on some Guardsmen.
“We have a
lot of National Guardsmen who are struggling with this, because unlike in
combat when you have an enemy, these are our neighbors, our friends, our
family,” the first Guard officer said.
The officer
said he even told Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
just before the Park Police moved in that the protests had been peaceful that
day, a sentiment that was shared by three other Guardsmen who were there.
Rep. Max
Rose (D-N.Y.), a Guardsman who was activated for the coronavirus pandemic but
not the unrest, said using the National Guard during a peaceful protest for
deterrence value “is not really the correct way” of employing the forces, which
should instead be used as partners with local law enforcement and as a
deescalating force.
Torrie
Osterholm, the D.C. National Guard’s director of psychological health, said in
an interview that many Guardsmen have reached out to her in the past week to
express the pain and confusion they struggled with during and after the
mission, both for what they witnessed and how the protesters reacted.
One
Guardsman told her, “‘I never thought I’d get a bottle thrown at me and be told
I should die and I should kill myself,’” Osterholm said. “There’s not enough
Kevlar to protect you from those kinds of statements spoken in your own
language.”
Maj. Gen. William
Walker, commander of the D.C. National Guard, acknowledged the challenges
Guardsmen faced in a Sunday briefing with reporters.
“I have
some Guardsmen whose family members came out and criticized them. 'What are you
doing out here, aren’t you black?'” Walker said. “Of course, we’re all hurting.
The nation is hurting.”
National
Guardsmen on steps of the Lincoln Memorial monitoring protesters
Members of
the D.C. National Guard stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial monitoring
demonstrators. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
But not all
encounters were negative. Maj. Brent Mangum, who has been in the Utah National
Guard for 17 years, said that during his week in D.C., a colleague who was
wearing a wristband in memory of a fallen police friend had a warm encounter
with a protester.
The
protester asked him about the wristband and why he wore it. So he took it off
and handed it to her, allowing the woman to read it.
“'Oh, so
you’re hurting too?’ she asked,” Mangum recalled.
A change in
attitude
One of the D.C.
National Guardsmen said he was worried that a lot of the goodwill that the
Guard has built up with local Washingtonians because of their coronavirus
response and annual Fourth of July celebrations was in jeopardy.
“Within the
span of 30 to 40 minutes, all of that washed away because of political stuff,”
he said.
Osterholm
said the Guardsmen were ill-prepared for the hate directed at them by the
protesters, which was reminiscent of the anti-military sentiment during the
Vietnam War. The shift from being viewed as heroes during the coronavirus
pandemic to villains suppressing citizens’ right to protest happened overnight,
she said.
“This
generation doesn’t know what that feels like. This generation knows ‘thank you
for your service,’ this generation knows that they can go to Lowe’s and Home
Depot and they can get 10 percent off,” Osterholm said. “A lot of us are still
in denial of the intensity and the traumatic impact this has had for everyone.”
Isaiah
Lynch said that as an African American, he was called a traitor by some
protesters who cursed at him, and also seen as an oppressor protecting the
cops.
But he said
a moment he would remember was when a man who had hit him with a brick the
first day approached him a few days later to apologize.
“He shook
my hand and told me, ‘Hey I’m sorry. Do you guys need any water or anything?’”
Stopping
the bleeding
As of
Monday, 42,700 National Guardsmen were deployed across 34 states and D.C. to
deal with protests. At the height of the response last week, 1,200 D.C.
National Guardsmen and another 3,900 from 11 states were patrolling the
nation’s capital. Defense Secretary Mark Esper gave the order for the out-of-state
Guardsmen to begin leaving on Friday; all are expected to return home by
Wednesday.
Guardsmen
across the country have tried to signal to Americans in the streets that
they’re on their side in several ways, including some taking a knee, giving
water to protesters, giving fist or elbow bumps, and even dancing the Macarena
in Georgia in a video that went viral.
But while
they’ve worked with local police, a number of them expressed disdain for how
the police have conducted themselves.
“The police
had lost credibility and a considerable amount of ground within their city so
we were a last ditch attempt to try to stop the bleeding,” said Capt. Maggie
Gregg of the Minnesota National Guard. She commanded a group of about 75 cooks,
mechanics, medics and even some HR professionals to provide security in south
Minneapolis after riots had broken out a few days after Floyd’s death.
Capt.
Richard Gilberti, a Nevada Guardsman, said at first he was nervous and unsure
about how Reno residents would react to armed soldiers in uniforms on American
streets. He worried about whether some people were going to be hostile to him
and his fellow soldiers. But pretty quickly, he could tell that most people
were happy they were there after the city had been hit with looting and
vandalism.
“We’re here
to make sure everybody can exercise their constitutional rights safely,” he
said, adding that soldiers were reminded that “these are all U.S. citizens, all
Nevadans, just like us, so treat them accordingly.”
Other
Guardsmen who were activated during the protests and unrest said they felt they
were being “weaponized” against fellow Americans.
“The
message that was being conveyed to the public was that we were placed to be
another weapon. We were placed there for scare. We were the scarecrow,” said
Gregg, who noted that some soldiers responding to the Minneapolis protests were
assigned to ride along in ambulances largely for “shock value,” which evoked
mixed feelings.
Because
many Guardsmen are young, “their friends were out there protesting but they
were here and they were being made to feel like they were part of the problem
instead of being part of the solution,” Gregg said.
She said
that the National Guard’s presence in the community may have even caused more
unrest the first night they were deployed. Some local Minneapolis residents,
she said, were more upset before they realized that the Guard had been called
up to help protect the community, instead of crack down on the protesters.
“It was
hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea: how are you helping us if
you have weapons and ammunition?” Gregg said.
Lara Seligman contributed to this report
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