Nicholas Nehamas, Sarah Blaskey
Warning: This article contains profane language.
Fort Lauderdale police officers laughed and celebrated after shooting protesters with rubber bullets at a May 31 George Floyd rally in Fort Lauderdale, newly released body camera footage shows.
“Beat it, little f***er,” Detective Zachary Baro, leader of a Fort Lauderdale SWAT team unit, can be heard saying after officers shot “less lethal” projectiles at a protester. The protester was walking away after tossing a tear gas canister back at the line of police.
A few minutes later, another officer, Jamie Chatman, came up to Baro behind the police line and asked if his body camera was off. Baro replied — incorrectly — that his camera was in “stand-by” mode and not recording. The two officers then began laughing and joking about the people they had shot with rubber bullets.
“Did you see me f**k up those motherf****rs?” one of the officers said.
“I got the one f***er,” the other replied amid laughter.
George Kirkham, a former police officer and professor emeritus at Florida State University, condemned the behavior captured on the footage.
“This is serious misconduct. This is people with badges acting like thugs,” Kirkham said. “It’s like a cancer. If you let it go, it will spread.”
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