COP TO REPORTER: 'GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE YOU PIECE OF SHIT'

Cops have 'attacked 120 reporters and arrested more than 33 during George Floyd protests: Bill de Blasio says journalists should 'never be detained' as news crews claim they are being shot at and roughed-up by police during the chaos

 

By Luke Kenton

 

Daily Mail

June 3, 2020

 

Reporters and news photographers across the country have described being harrassed, arrested and having projectiles shot at them by police while covering demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd over the last week, as tensions rise and trust erodes.

The US Press Freedom Tracker said that as of Tuesday afternoon, 211 press freedom violations have been reported since May 28.

More than 33 journalists have reported being arrested, 143 assaulted and at least 35 reporters have had their equipment damaged while covering the protests. Nieman Lab reported that 120 of those assaults were made by police.

‘Although in some incidents it is possible the journalists were hit or affected accidentally, in the majority of the cases we have recorded the journalists are clearly identifiable as press, and it is clear that they are being deliberately targeted,’ Nieman Lab reported.

 

In New York City last night, NYPD officers surrounded, shoved and yelled expletives at two Associated Press journalists covering the protests.

Portions of the incident were captured on video by journalist Robert Bumsted, who was working with photographer Maye-E Wong to document the protests in lower Manhattan.

The video shows more than a half-dozen officers confronting the journalists as they filmed and took photographs of police ordering protesters to leave the area near Fulton and Broadway shortly after an 8pm curfew took effect.

An officer, using an expletive, orders them to go home. Bumsted is heard on video explaining the press are considered ‘essential workers’ and are allowed to be on the streets. An officer responds ‘I don't give a shit.’ Another tells Bumsted ‘get the fuck out of here you piece of shit.’

Bumsted and Wong said officers shoved them, separating from one another and pushing them toward Bumsted's car, which was parked nearby.

At one point Bumsted said he was pinned against his car. He is heard on video telling the officer that Wong has his keys and he needs them to leave the area. Officers then allowed Wong to approach and the two got in the vehicle and left.

 

Both journalists were wearing AP identification and repeatedly identified themselves as media.

‘They didn't care,’ Wong said. ‘They were just shoving me.’

In response to the footage of the incident, NYPD officials said they would review the matter ‘as soon as possible’.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio urged the NYPD Wednesday to investigate why members of the media were being detained and accosted while covering the protests.

'No journalist should be detained, ever,' de Blasio warned.  

In response, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea claimed that protesters in the city were falsely identifying themselves as reporters in attempts to escape punishment, confusing officer's efforts to control the crowds.

'We've had some people purporting to be press that are actually lying,' Shea said Wednesday. 'Maybe these things take too long to resolve. We're not perfect - we do the best we can in the situation and whether its essential workers or press. 

'The reality is, in chaotic situations - these things take a few moments to sort out,' shea continued, adding that his department have 'full respect for the press'.

Journalists have faced aggressive police and protesters during demonstrations across the U.S. over the killing of Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died after a white officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd's neck in Minneapolis.

Many reporters, photographers and other members of the press said the treatment they’ve experienced over the last week has reflected an erosion of trust in the news media that has seeped from the top down, beginning with the Trump administration and the president’s claims of ‘fake news’ and journalists being the ‘enemy of the people’.

‘This story, in particular, it seems journalists are really being targeted by the police,’ Barbara Davidson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, told the New York Times. ‘That’s not something I have experienced before to this degree.’

It’s common in autocratic countries for journalists to be arrested during protests and riots, but seldom seen in democracies –particularly in the United States, where freedom of the press is guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Last Friday, Minnesota State Patrol officers arrested a CNN journalist live on air. The same day, a TV reporter in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot at my police using pepper bullets.

In the first incident, CNN’s Omar Jiminez was put in handcuffs and led away from his team of producers at 5.11am CT on Friday after the team was moved down the street by police in riot gear.

According to one of his colleagues, the crew was told he was being arrested for refusing to move when he'd been told to but he was heard live on air telling the officers: 'Put us back to where you want us - wherever you'd want us we'll go. Just let us know.'

Jimenez told them they were live on air with CNN and was put in handcuffs.

He asked: 'Do you mind telling me why I am under arrest sir? Why am I under arrest sir' then was led away.

Two of his colleagues from the same team were also arrested. The trio were put in a police van and were driven to a precinct but were released around 90 minutes later after CNN President Jeff Zucker and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz intervened.

 

Minnesota State Police has since claimed on Twitter the crew were released once they 'confirmed' they were reporters - which they'd already declared live on air, minutes before Jimenez was put in handcuffs.

Just hours later in Louisville, WAVE 3 News reporter Kaitlin Rust and photojournalist James Dobson were struck by pepper balls fired by an LMPD officer who appeared to be aiming at them as Rust covered the protests.

‘I’m getting shot! I’m getting shot!’ Rust chillingly exclaimed on air.

The news anchor from inside the studio asks Rust if she’s ok, to which she replied: ‘Rubber bullets, rubber bullets.’

Early Saturday, a Fox News reporter was pummelled and chased by protesters who had gathered outside the White House.

Fox’s Leland Vittert was rattled following the Washington attack that he said was clearly targeted at his news organization.

‘We took a good thumping,’ he later recalled of the incident.

During a live take he was interrupted by a group of protesters who shouted obscenities directed at Fox. Flanked by two security guards, he and photographer Christian Galdabini walked away from Washington’s Lafayette Park trailed by an angry group before riot police dispersed them.

Vittert said there were no markings on him or the crew’s equipment to identify them as from Fox. But he said during the demonstration, one man continually asked him who he worked for.

Virrert didn’t answer, but the man found a picture of the reporter on his cell phone and shouted to other protesters that he was from Fox.

‘The protesters stopped protesting whatever it was they were protesting and turned on us,’ he said, ‘and that was a very different feeling.’

He compared the incident to being chased away from a demonstration in Egypt during the Arab Spring in 2011, by a group who were shouting, ‘Fox News hates Muslims’.

Freelance journalist Linda Tirado, 37, was left blind in one of her eyes while photographing a protest in Minnesota the same day, having been struck with what she believed was a rubber bullet or a marking round.

Tirado had been lining up her next shot, when she put her camera down for a moment and suddenly felt her face ‘explode’.

Tirado told DailyMail.com: 'Protesters said police were tear-gassing. I put on my goggles and respirator.

'It was pretty chaotic - people were moving in every direction. Then I kind of felt my face explode.'

The mother of two young girls, who had also photographed the protest in the city the night prior, added: 'I put up my hands and shouted "I'm press, I'm press."'

With her eyes filled with blood, protesters 'acted as my eyes when I couldn't see past the blood and the swelling' and got her to hospital.

'I was in surgery 20 minutes after that,' she told DailyMail.com after returning from hospital on Saturday. 'I woke up this morning with an eye patch on.'

Doctors have told her she is going to be left with scarring on her face and will be permanently blind in one eye - although she hopes in the future she may be able to gain the ability to see light and shadows through the damaged eye.

Similarly, KPCC reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez was struck in the throat by a rubber bullet while he was interviewing a protester in Long Beach, California.

Just as Rust and Tirado reported, Guzman-Lopez believes the officer deliberately aimed at him.

‘I talked to him for about a minute and just as I was finishing talking to him — right after I said: “Thank you,” I heard a pop and I felt something, you know, the bottom of my throat and I saw something bounced onto the ground, and then I ran,’ he later recalled.

‘Nobody else in that intersection was doing anything like I was doing there…I was obviously interviewing someone.’

At a press conference on Monday, Long Beach's Mayor and Chief of Police addressed the incident and apologized to the reporter.

‘I've personally also communicated with him, apologized to him as well, and we'll look forward to discussing that in the days ahead,’ Mayor Robert Garcia said.

In Detroit, Mayor Mike Duggan was also forced to apologize to journalists from the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News who were seemingly targeted by police.

Duggan’s apology also came during a Monday press conference, saying: ‘They had a lot of courage to be on the other side of the police-line with the protestors, and I apologize to you.’

Detroit News reporter Christine MacDonald told her station she had been filming an arrest on Sunday at Grand Circus Park when she was handcuffed by an officer.

As dozens of other journalists have reported, she repeatedly identified herself as press, telling the officer she had credentials. Despite this, she was escorted to the officer’s squad car and detained briefly before being released.

Meanwhile, Free Press reporter JC Reindl posted on Twitter that he was chased down by a Detroit police officer during a protest on Saturday. The officer pepper-sprayed him in the face, despite the Reindl holding up his press badge to show he was a reporter.

Mayor Duggan called the editors of both outlets to discuss the incidents that inhibited the reporters’ ability to cover the protests.

‘We need to work together to make sure that the media has clear identification,’ Duggan said, according to Detroit News.

‘We do respect the heroism that you showed the last three days and I want all the reporters to know that we are going to make adjustments to use every opportunity to keep you safe,’ he added.

In the late night drama at Lafayette Park, our team (@Joshrepp on camera) was sprayed with pepper spray though we were away from protesters and clearly press (camera, microphone, etc). 3 hours later my arm was still burning. Others got it far worse.

Yesterday, an Australian reporter for Sunrise was accosted by police in Washington DC.

An officer was filmed using his shield to smash Amelia Brace's cameraman Tim Myers in the middle of her live cross to the studio before another officer hit her in the back with his baton.

Brace said they were both hit by rubber bullets prior to the altercation, as police used batons and tear gas to push hundreds of protesters back away from the White House.

Brace shouted, 'We're media!' as officers targeted her and Myers.

'Cameraman Tim Meyers and I are both okay. Pretty bruised, but okay,' Brace later told Channel 7.

CNN’s Josh Replogle and Alexander Marquardt had been covering the same protests near DC’s Lafayette Park in the early hours of Wednesday morning when he and his crew were pepper sprayed by the National Guard.

‘An otherwise peaceful day ends with unrest,’ Marquardt tweeted. ‘I really don’t know how that helped anything.

‘Our team was sprayed with pepper spray though we were away from protesters and clearly press (camera, microphone, etc),’ he continued in a thread. ‘3 hours later my arm was still burning. Others got it far worse.’