Twenty-six people hospitalized from ‘mass casualty incident’ that included bone fractures and hypothermia shown in dramatic video footage of standoff

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Twenty-six people were hospitalized and more than 300 injured after North Dakota law enforcement officers trained water cannons, teargas, and other “less-than-lethal” weapons on unarmed activists protesting against the Dakota Access pipeline in below-freezing weather on Sunday night, according to a group of medical professionals supporting the anti-pipeline movement.

The Standing Rock Medic & Healer Council said that injuries from the “mass casualty incident” included multiple bone fractures from projectiles fired by police, a man with internal bleeding from a rubber bullet injury, a man who suffered a grand mal seizure, and a woman who was struck in the face with a rubber bullet and whose vision was compromised.

The majority of the patients suffered hypothermia, a result of being soaked by water cannons, the group said.

Civil rights groups are decrying the use of water cannons in below-freezing weather.

“It’s absolutely a blatant disregard for the safety and humanity of unarmed protesters,” said Jen Cook, policy director for the ACLU of North Dakota. “In combination with other tactics, it’s a misuse of less-than-lethal weaponry … It’s unjustifiable.”

Dramatic video footage of the standoff between several hundred anti-pipeline protesters and law enforcement officers shows police repeatedly aiming the water cannon directly at individuals – and not at fires, as the Morton County sheriff’s department claimed on Sunday night.

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The footage also appears to show that law enforcement officers were separated from the demonstrators by a barbed wire fence and concertina wire, raising further questions about whether such force was justified.

The Morton County sheriff, Kyle Kirchmaier, defended the use of the water cannons in a press conference today, though he objected to the terminology.

“We don’t have a water cannon,” he said. “I don’t know where the term water cannon comes from. This was basically just a fire hose.”

Kirchmaier said that law enforcement officers did consider the low temperatures when they deployed the water, but said: “We’re just not going to tolerate people and protesters in large groups coming and threatening officers. That’s not happening. So as this was going on, the water was used as a tool to help quell that situation, and when it was no longer necessary, it was not used any longer.”

The incident began on Sunday evening, when a group of activists, who refer to themselves as “water protectors”, attempted to move two burned trucks off a bridge just north of the protesters’ encampments. Law enforcement officers then began attacking the demonstrators with a barrage of less-than-lethal weapons, including teargas, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police spray water on protesters during the night of 20 November. Photograph: Stephanie Keith/Reuters

The bridge has been barricaded for weeks, forcing vehicles to take an approximately 20-mile detour to reach Bismarck, the closest city. Activists say that the barricade is threatening the safety of people in the camps, as well as residents who live further south on the reservation.

The use of water cannons against protesters invokes images of African Americans being bombarded with fire hoses during the civil rights movement, but the crowd control tactic was developed in Germany in the 1930s, according to the ACLU.



The civil liberties organization warns that water cannons can cause hypothermia, frostbite and internal injuries from the force of the stream.

In light of Sunday’s events, Cook said the ACLU was renewing its call for the Department of Justice to investigate the use of force by law enforcement officers on the protesters. Cook stressed that the ACLU wants to see Barack Obama’s administration open the investigation before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The ACLU was joined by Amnesty International and the National Lawyers Guild in condemning the use of force by law enforcement agencies.





Sunday’s violence drew suspicion and concern from the indigenous and environmental activists who have established encampments near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in opposition to the pipeline, which is planned to cross under the Missouri river. The tribe fears that the pipeline could contaminate their water source and object to construction disturbing sacred burial grounds.

Last week, the US government announced that it was delaying granting the final permit that Dakota Access pipeline needs to drill under the river. The company fired back, filing court papers seeking a judicial order that they be allowed to drill.

The pipeline’s parent company, Energy Transfer Partners, announced today that it was merging with Sunoco Logistics Partner. Both companies are part of an oil and gas empire controlled by ETP’s CEO, Kelcy Warren. The $21bn all-stock deal will boost the companies by simplifying their complex relationship, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Dave Archambualt, chairman of the tribal council of the Standing Rock Sioux, said that he fears violent confrontations with law enforcement will convince the government to allow drilling to proceed.

“Every time there’s something like a confrontation and life is being threatened, I think the government is going to do what they can to try to end this before someone gets killed,” he said. “Aggression by law enforcement has always been intentional to force the government to give the easement.”

“It’s escalating more and more to the point where law enforcement is not really concerned with human life,” he added.

Rupa Marya, a physician at the University of California, San Francisco who has travelled to Standing Rock to help provide medical care, echoed Archambault’s concerns.

“If the police are going to be there actively spraying people with water in 27-degree weather, its putting people at tremendous risk for death from hypothermia,” she said. “They might be calling this non-lethal forms of crowd control, but these are lethal forms of violence.”

Nicky Woolf contributed reporting