Chief Jon Belmar, who is leading the response to protests over death of Michael Brown, accused of dishonesty by demonstrators after statements on public radio

The police chief leading the response to protests over the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, has been accused of dishonesty by demonstrators after denying that officers shot at them with rubber bullets and claiming that only criminals were teargassed.



Chief Jon Belmar of St Louis County made the claims as the region braced for the possibility of further unrest following the imminent decision of a grand jury on whether a white police officer should face criminal charges for killing Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old.

Discussing clashes with protesters in the days following Brown’s death on 9 August, Belmar told St Louis public radio: “We didn’t use rubber bullets. If they’re actually rubber bullets, they’ll kill you.” After making a similar statement during an interview with KSDK, he said that his officers had instead used “little balls full of pepper spray”.

Belmar went on to say in his public radio interview that teargas and smoke grenades had not been fired at “peaceful protesters”, adding: “We used that on unfortunate criminal activity that span out of the protests.”

His remarks stirred fresh mistrust among demonstrators as they urged police not to use military-style equipment against future protests. Those are expected if officer Darren Wilson is not indicted by the grand jury, which is due to announce its decision in the coming days. Many were shot at in August with hard rubber balls that are frequently termed “rubber bullets”, or struggled through clouds of teargas after ignoring police instructions to leave the streets.

A protester kicks what appears to be a teargas canister back towards police after protests in reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Deray McKesson, an activist who co-authors a daily newsletter that has become central to the protest movement, described Belmar’s comments as “disingenuous at best, and downright dishonest at worst”. He said: “We saw projectiles that were rubber. It is clear that Chief Belmar is attempting to revise history. A lie continuously repeated is not the truth.”

While officers did fire the pepper balls Belmar referenced – paintball-style projectiles containing a chemical irritant – they also shot at protesters repeatedly with hard rubber balls that have often been grouped under the heading of “rubber bullets” with other so-called “less lethal” ammunition such as wooden batons and beanbag rounds.

Sid Heal, a retired commander in the Los Angeles police department and an authority on the policing of crowds, said that while the balls were not technically bullets, they were one of the few commonly used crowd control projectile to actually be made of rubber. “You can tell the truth and be misleading at the same time,” said Heal.

“‘Rubber bullets’ is really a generic term that was coined by the media some years ago,” said Heal. “It has become part of a jargon generally describes any projectile that you can launch that tends to be non-lethal. It has never been a precise definition.”

A used cartridge discovered by the Guardian on 12 August revealed that police were firing 37mm rounds at protesters that each contained 18 .60 calibre rubber balls. The cartridges are fired from so-called “gas guns” or multi-shot grenade launchers. Wooden baton rounds were found nearby the same morning, after protesters complained of being injured by them.

Wooden bullets discovered in Ferguson, Missouri, the day after protests broke out over the killing of Michael Brown. Photograph: Jon Swaine/Guardian

The manufacturer of the rubber balls, Defense Technology, describes them as “a pain compliance round for crowd control” and warns officers not to fire them above a target’s breast level. Among other injuries, Renita Lamkin, a pastor who worked to keep the peace during August’s protests, suffered deep bruising after being shot above the waist by what she described as a rubber bullet.

Asked to clarify Belmar’s remarks, Officer Brian Schellman, a spokesman for the county force, said in an email: “The Chief said we did not use rubber bullets, which are large rubber projectiles shot from the barrel of a firearm, which we did not use. We did use sting balls.”

Demonstrators were equally dismayed by Belmar’s claim that teargas was only used on those responsible for “criminal activity” that was an offshoot of protests, rather than on protests themselves. “It wasn’t the case,” said Bassem Masri, a protester who livestreamed the clashes with police. “Media were teargassed, so were peaceful protesters.”

The Guardian observed police at the height of the protests firing teargas repeatedly at people only to clear them from the streets around West Florissant Avenue, a short stretch of which was the centre of the clashes. On the night of 13 August, for instance, a barrage of teargas grenades was fired at demonstrators already fleeing down Lang Drive.

Michael McPhearson, the co-chairman of the Don’t Shoot Coalition of protest groups, said that demonstrators who failed to disperse and remained in the street to express themselves were engaged in legitimate civil disobedience. “We have a right to do that in this country,” said McPhearson. “That’s not criminal activity to me.”

Schellman, the police spokesman, conceded that some “peaceful folks who refused to disperse” despite police demands “were unfortunately the subject of teargas”, which he said was fired only when “the violence and criminal element broke out of peaceful protests”.

“Our intention in August, and now, is/was to never use any type of force against those who are truly there to exercise their first amendment right,” said Schellman.