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A filmmaker and pro-free trade
businessman questions why he was shot by police with a beanbag weapon
during FTAA talks when he was on the sidewalk with other media, not in
the street protesting.
It was late afternoon on Nov. 20,
2003, the bloodiest day of protests against the Free Trade Area of the
Americas summit in Miami.
Police and demonstrators had been
skirmishing since mid-morning. About 4 p.m., police in riot gear began
pushing protesters off Biscayne Boulevard onto Northeast Third Street.
A local commercial filmmaker named
Carl Kesser found himself caught between heavily armed Miami police and
Broward Sheriff's Office deputies and retreating protesters.
Kesser, 57, was unprotected. He
steadied his video camera atop a concrete sidewalk planter just west of
Northeast Second Avenue, on the north side of the street, then ducked
behind the planter for cover.
Miami Police Chief John Timoney rode
his bicycle onto the south sidewalk. Less than a minute later, the
police line began to move, and so did Kesser: ''running for my life,''
he says.
Suddenly, blood spattered across Kesser's lens. A woman screamed, ``Oh my God! He's been hit!''
A ''drag stabilized'' beanbag had
torn through the skin over his cheekbone and kept moving, lodging under
the outer edge of his eyebrow.
The next
day, a photo of Kesser appeared in The Herald, one of the most shocking
images from the day's violence. The newspaper mistakenly identified him
as an unnamed protester.
Soaked in blood, open-mouthed and
gasping, he was tended by a protest-movement medic. His fashionable
glasses were askew. The projectile formed a hideous lump at his temple.
Two months later, the right side of his face remains partially paralyzed and his right eyelid droops.
A bandage still covers part of his ear and the raw slash where 35 stitches closed a golf ball-size hole.
His days on camera are over, Kesser said.
``The doctor tells me the nerve is gone and will never come back.''
That Carl Kesser was among the most
seriously injured during FTAA is more than ironic. He's a
Porsche-driving, Brickell-area businessman and father of five who calls
himself ``the most Miami person you'll ever meet.''
He specializes in real estate and tourism films.
Advertising-industry and film festival awards dating back 30 years line the walls of his Art Deco offices.
Kesser Stock Library, his company,
has sold film clips to a slew of Hollywood movies -- including Ace
Ventura and Analyze This -- and television shows such as CSI Miami and Saturday Night Live.
The lifelong Coconut Grove resident
is best known for the educational documentary Our Miami, the Magic City,
a history of Miami aimed at middle-school students. Commissioned by the
Junior League of Miami in 1981, it features voice-overs by actor Cliff
Robertson and won three Emmys.
Kesser and Miami historian Arva Moore
Parks, who wrote the script, are planning a second update, which might
include FTAA footage.
Kesser, said Parks, ``has got a
little filmmaker in him, but he's kind of an establishment person -- not
at all a rabble rouser. He went down there because he was pro-FTAA.''
In fact, Kesser said he went downtown
'to do a pro-FTAA thing -- a `feel good piece' -- and give it to the
delegates. I'm on their side. . . . I'm not political. My thing was that
FTAA will create jobs.
``I figured I'd show how the police
handled this. I didn't think anything could happen here. And if it did, I
was out of there.''
`POSTER CHILD'
Now, said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff,
president of the Miami chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union,
Kesser is ''a poster child'' for a police tactic developed in Miami for
the FTAA. ''What you saw in Miami was police taking aim at the media and
innocent bystanders,'' she said.
The ACLU represents Kesser, who has not yet filed a lawsuit.
''Don't I have the right to be on the sidewalk shooting [video] . . . ?'' he asked.
The bag that hit Kesser was launched inside a standard plastic shell fired from a 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun.
A soft cloth sack containing sesame
seed-size lead shot, it weighs about as much as a C-cell battery. Four,
two-inch fabric tails -- the drag stabilizers that keep it traveling
straight -- make it look like a baby octopus.
Sgt. Anthony Utset, Timoney's senior executive assistant, said that only SWAT team members used beanbags during FTAA.
He has viewed Kesser's video and that
of freelance cameraman Roger Prehoda of Hollywood, who was shooting for
NBC News on Third Street that afternoon.
Neither tape shows Kesser getting hit, so who shot him and why remains unknown.
But Utset acknowledged that Kesser ``was not a protester or a threat. . . . I'm confident it was definitely done accidentally.''
Prehoda isn't so sure. He's convinced that journalists were targeted.
As the police line advanced west on
Third Street, ''it turned into a real shooting gallery,'' Prehoda said.
``There were no protesters and only media.''
According to Miami police reports,
Miami officers fired 227 pepper balls, 32 sponges and 71 beanbags --
12-gauge and 40mm -- on Third Street between 4 and 6 p.m.
Two Miami SWAT commanders submitted
hourly logs about what happened on Nov. 20. Lt. Rene Landa, heading SWAT
Unit 20, wrote that at 4:30 p.m., ``less lethal and pepper ball were
deployed at individuals that were throwing rocks, bottles, ball bearings
and other objects at field force.''
Lt. Armando Guzman's log at 5 p.m.
stated: ``Less lethal and pepper ball deployments were against
individuals that were throwing objects such as glass bottles, rocks,
paving stones against law enforcement personnel.''
Both men declined to be interviewed until the city's Civilian Investigative Panel finishes its probe into the police's actions.
SPECIFIC PROTOCOL
Miami police had a specific protocol
for the use of less-lethal weapons during FTAA. Despite numerous verbal
and e-mailed requests to various police personnel, including Timoney,
the department would not release it to The Herald.
Miami police Sgt. Robert Baker
trained the city SWAT personnel who worked the FTAA. He said they must
recertify in the use of less-lethal weapons twice a year.
Beanbags are ''target-specific,'' he
said. ``If someone was wielding a knife and you didn't want to kill him,
the blunt force of the impact would numb your arm and you'd drop the
knife. . . . It's designed to get an initial jump on someone.''
Drag-stabilized beanbags are most
accurate between 20 and 50 feet, according to product literature. Kesser
said he was hit at 30 feet.
The department ''brought in a lot of
this ammo for FTAA,'' Baker said. ``We don't normally keep a lot of it
on hand. They trained heavily on it.''
Baker, who said he has never seen a
beanbag round penetrate skin: ``I never advise [officers to aim] for the
head. All of the less lethal [weapons] are designed to stay away from
the head. These are very specifically less lethal. They can kill you,
but if used correctly, shouldn't.''
Maj. Steve Ijames of the Springfield,
Mo., police department, is an expert on less lethal weapons and has
testified in dozens of beanbag injury cases, some from riot situations.
Though he is unfamiliar with Miami
police less-lethal training, he said standard practice is to use beanbag
rounds as ''an extremity-type tool,'' like an extension of a
nightstick.
``A lot of chest shots result in fatalities.''
Head shots would ``depend on the circumstances based on threat.''
Beanbags travel slowly, he said -- 300 feet per second -- and drop quickly.
``If you aim perfectly parallel to
the ground, it will be in the dirt at 80 feet. . . . The round is low
energy [with] about the same energy as a thrown fastball.''
Ijames would not theorize about
Kesser's situation, but said that when someone is hit in the head, it is
often because the officer missed his intended target or because the
officer aimed at the torso just as the suspect ducked.
Ijames has been investigating police shootings for 25 years and doubted anyone shot Kesser intentionally.
''I'd be blown away by anyone who did
it on purpose,'' Ijames said. ``This isn't the 1950s, and there will be
investigations. Officers understand there's an accounting for serious
injury.''
HARD TO BELIEVE
Carl Kesser did not want to believe
that someone took aim at him because he was in the media. But he could
not get past the reality that he was in a crowd of journalists on the
sidewalk and the protesters were in the street.
''Nothing was happening'' when the
barrage began, he insisted, and Roger Prehoda confirmed. ``Police said
they had issued repeated warnings. I heard not one. I'm not a radical,
and I'm not trying to make a big deal of this, but they're not supposed
to shoot at the head.''
Kesser conceded that he was ''naive''
about the FTAA. He never imagined getting hurt on the streets of his
hometown. But it did cross his wife's mind.
Martha Salas-Kesser, 44, came to
South Florida in 1980 from Venezuela, returned to Venezuela in 1992,
then came back to the United States in 1998, after Venezuelan political
conditions deteriorated.
Until Nov. 20, 2003, ''everything in
the States was something for me admirable,'' she said. ``From that day, I
started wondering. I hope what we go through legally will prove me
wrong. . . . Things were done the wrong way, and someone needs to accept
that.''
It appears that someone has.
On Thursday afternoon, two Miami officers showed up at Kesser's office and told his staff they wanted to see him.
He wasn't there, but says he later spoke to Deputy Chief Frank Fernandez on the phone.
''They wanted to say they were
sorry,'' Kesser said. ``They discovered that one of their SWAT guys shot
me. I thought it was pretty cool that they'd stand up and do that.''
Fernandez couldn't be reached late Saturday.
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