Photographer Sues City, LAPD Officers Over Injuries At Street Protest

LOS ANGELES, CA — A freelance news photographer who alleges he was unlawfully hit in the face with a baton by a Los Angeles Police Department officer while covering a protest against federal immigration enforcement policy last year filed a civil rights lawsuit Monday against the city and the officer he says struck him.

Nick Stern alleges that while covering the August 2025 protest in downtown Los Angeles, LAPD Officer Wyatt Aulick "aggressively advanced" and "swung his baton across (Stern's) face," despite Stern repeatedly showing his press credential and verbally identifying himself as a working journalist, according to the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court.

Stern alleges the officer violated a July 2025 court order issued after journalists reported being struck by "less-lethal" munitions, shoved, detained and blocked from documenting protests during recent immigration demonstrations. The order barred LAPD officers from assaulting, obstructing or using crowd-control weapons against journalists who posed no threat, and directed LAPD leadership to communicate those restrictions to officers assigned to protest duty, according to the suit for excessive force and civil rights violations.

An LAPD spokesperson said the department could not immediately comment on the litigation.

Less than two months earlier, on June 7, 2025, Stern was allegedly hit by part of a so-called less-lethal 40-mm projectile while covering a similar immigration enforcement protest in Compton. The device's hard plastic casing embedded in his thigh, resulting in significant physical injury that required surgery and months of recovery, Stern said.

The August protest was the first he felt well enough to document after his June 2025 injury, his attorney said.

"Nick Stern was doing his job reporting on a significant and highly newsworthy event happening in the city," civil rights attorney V. James DeSimone said in a statement. "He clearly and repeatedly identified himself as working press. Instead of allowing him to do his job -- as LAPD was directed to by a temporary restraining order -- it appears he was specifically targeted."

According to the complaint, Aulick and the city of Los Angeles violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and California's Bane Act. The lawsuit also alleges assault and battery, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress

Two years ago, Stern settled a similar lawsuit filed in 2021 against the city, its police chief and various officers. Stern alleged in the complaint that while covering the May 30, 2020, protests prompted by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, unidentified LAPD officers struck him in the ribs with their batons, fired a rubber bullet at his upper thigh, and shot him with a projectile near his knee.