State terrorism: A low-flying ‘show of force’
Hemmed in by police on all sides, Camellia Magness feared that the military helicopter descending on downtown Washington might unleash a final assault on protesters.
It was June 1, nearly three hours after federal police in riot gear charged largely peaceful demonstrators as they gathered near the White House to protest after the killing of George Floyd. Magness and others had lingered downtown past a 7 p.m. curfew.
Military helicopters had been flying high overhead, seeming to track their movements. But shortly before 10 p.m., a Black Hawk swept low over protesters in Chinatown and held its position, producing gusts that snapped thick tree limbs and swirled the air with volleys of dust and broken glass, sending many running for cover in panic and confusion.
“I thought they were going to land,” Magness, 24, said, fearing soldiers would pour out and force protesters into waves of police.
The Washington Post reconstructed the movements of the two D.C. Army National Guard helicopters that parked nearly still in the air over protesters in Chinatown that night, using flight-tracking data, images and videos.
One of the helicopters dropped as low as an estimated 45 feet, according to a 3-D model created by The Post.
That altitude meant that the helicopter, a Lakota painted with the red cross of a medical evacuation aircraft, was below the height of the tallest nearby buildings, the analysis shows.
On the streets, the maneuvers created wind speeds equivalent to a tropical storm, according to calculations by aerospace engineers who reviewed The Post’s data.
The two helicopters hovered over the protesters for a combined 10 minutes, first one and then the other, as protesters ran for cover.
The maneuvers — which did not appear to result in reported injuries — were a surreal coda to a day of demonstrations in Washington following the police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis that stunned human rights groups, military law experts and former pilots, who described them as a show of force more commonly used to disperse civilians in war zones. [Continue reading…]