Six minutes after Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Officer Mark Eshe arrived at an anti-ICE protest on June 11, he fired 20 rounds of pepper ball bullets into the crowd, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday. Less than 10 minutes after that, he had fired another 37 rounds. 

Eshe unloaded a total of 157 balls in less than an hour and a half, “terrorizing” protesters in “retaliation” for their actions, according to the lawsuit filed in Clark County District Court on behalf of Emanuel Beltran, a Clark County resident who alleges that he was unlawfully arrested and the use of excessive force violated his civil rights.

The lawsuit is the latest response to questionable police officer conduct at a protest this summer against Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions. Nearly 100 arrests were made, according to a statement from Mayor Shelley Berkley, although the city did not press charges against a majority of the protesters arrested at the demonstration. 

At the time of the event, police had warned that they would use tear gas and nonlethal bullets on protesters gathered after an order to disperse was issued around 9:30 p.m., though critics have said that the order was not “audible to all.” 

Metro’s protest policies stipulate that officers will only target individuals who pose a threat. Deployment of aerosol irritants will only be used at the direction of the supervisor and only after a clear warning has been given, the policies further state. 

Metro said it does not comment on pending litigation and did not say whether Eshe was still employed as an officer or what the protocol is for officers violating the department’s protest policies.

Metro has defended its response to the protest, where four Metro officers were injured. Police have said that protesters threw bottles and rocks at them. In October, the department filed to resubmit evidence related to the arrest of protesters after the city dropped most charges.  

“My cops are experts at dealing with these things,” Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill told 8 News Now this October regarding the protests. “We don’t go taking people to jail right away until my men and women are out there and we get a lawful warning stop because somebody has thrown a rock, a bottle of battery, frozen water bottles, whatever it is at my cops, and we are now physically being beaten.”

The lawsuit alleges that officers were encouraging the use of force against protesters, with one lieutenant giving Eshe a “congratulatory hug” at the end of the night. A SWAT officer also allegedly told Eshe to “have fun” while he was reloading Eshe’s pepper ball gun for him during the protest. 

When Beltran asked an officer if he was being arrested, the officer said “everyone” was being arrested. Another officer, Jacob Castile, said the protesters were being arrested for unlawful assembly. 

“What did you honestly expect to happen, brother? We’re in the entertainment capital of the f***ing world,” Castile told Beltran, according to the lawsuit.

The claims echo complaints in other pending lawsuits. A separate suit, filed on behalf of Kathleen Cavalaro, alleges that Calavaro’s First Amendment rights were violated at the protest by wrongful arrest and use of excessive force. After attempting to disperse at an officer’s direction, police officers began to shoot her in the back with a “barrage of pepper balls” and she was arrested for provoking a breach of peace.

Though a court ordered Cavalaro to be released, the City of Las Vegas held Cavalaro for another nine hours while “a jail officer delivered a religious sermon rebuking her activism in the name of Jesus, threatening ‘life in prison’ if she protested again,” Cavalaro’s lawsuit said.

Cavalaro and Beltran allege that their civil rights were violated during and after the protest.  Cavalaro’s attorney asserts that an officer falsified the time and location in her arrest report, so she would be in the zone where dispersal orders were announced.