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During a June 2, 2020 protest against police brutality and racial injustice in Asheville, North Carolina, police in riot gear destroyed a medic tent operated by an all-volunteer team of doctors, certified nurses, EMTs, military combat medics, and citizens with CPR and first-aid certifications. According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, the team had a verbal agreement with APD to be present, even after curfew. Nevertheless, a scene captured by witnesses minutes after the curfew began showed police forcibly removing volunteers, crushing and emptying water bottles, and destroying the tent: One volunteer said, We were not protesting. We were not agitating. We had claimed that space. We had set up a triage area in case of any injuries. We had eyewash, sutures, EMT, doctors, EMS workers. They came in full riot gear, hit us with shields, threw several people to the ground. We were grabbed, thrown, shouted at, screamed at, treated as criminals. No one resisted. Videos of the tent’s destruction went viral, and public outrage followed. The Asheville Police Department's initial statement from Chief David Zack on June 3, 2020, confirmed that the incident took place, but defended the department’s actions, largely placing blame for the incident on the medical volunteers: But this statement from the chief only exacerbated tensions in Asheville. Sean Miller, one of the organizers of the medic tent, told a local CBS affiliate that the statement was shocking. Miller continued, saying, We had no explosives. There was nothing that could have been perceived as an explosive. Faced with continued backlash, Zack, who has been on the job just four months, released a second statement on June 4, 2020, this time apologizing for his department's role in the incident: Because the incident was captured in multiple videos and has been confirmed by the Asheville Police Department itself, the claim that officers forcibly destroyed a medic tent during a protest against police brutality is True.
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