Buffalo, N.Y., police officers cleared of wrongdoing after shoving elderly man to ground at protest

An arbitrator has ruled that two police officers in Buffalo, N.Y., didn’t violate the department’s use-of-force guidelines when they pushed a 75-year-old protester to the ground in June 2020, during racial injustice protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The episode drew national attention when a news crew captured video of Martin Gugino being shoved by officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski in downtown Buffalo, as crowd control officers in riot gear cleared demonstrators for an 8 p.m. curfew.

Gugino, who was pushed backward, started bleeding after hitting his head on the pavement and spent about a month in