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.