zlacker

>>sorami+(OP)
Man, this seems like such an uphill battle. I feel like unless they can show police were trying to deliberately target the press rather than just treating them like any other members of the public, they'll have that much more difficult of a time getting past qualified immunity and winning a lawsuit.

>>mehrda+1y
I agree with you this probably won't be easy. But the video of the CNN arrest is quite damning in my non-lawyer opinion. They had press credentials. They clearly and calmly identify themselves as press. They clearly and calmly state that they will move back to wherever the police want them. They are arrested 1 by 1 over the course of several minutes.

>>TallGu+my
I'm having trouble finding the clip you're talking about (the link next to CNN redirects to AP News and says "PAGE NOT FOUND" for me?), but in any case: the thing is, I don't think (though IANAL, please do correct me if this is wrong!) it legally matters one bit that they had press credentials and clearly identified themselves as such. Being a journalist, as far as I know, doesn't give you some kind of immunity to anything. My understanding is that if they get treated better, it's only because the executive does it out of respect for the press or to steer clear of the line and build a more clear-cut case. But legally, I expect they'll just be treated like any random people. I imagine police will make a case that it's not realistic to negotiate with each person on an individual basis when dealing with crowds and that they have to do things in bulk as much as possible. And if you want to win, you can't realistically argue that they shouldn't have the power to do things en masse, so the only viable remaining argument I can see is that, even with that consideration, their actions were still somehow unconstitutional. It's possible one could make such a case for some of these incidents, but if the CNN case was merely one of being "arrested" as you describe (and not e.g. getting badly injured etc.), it doesn't sound like a winning case. The legal system seems to pretty much treat a mere arrest as a no-op in many situations... treating it otherwise requires clearing a really high bar as far as I've been able to tell.

>>mehrda+nB
Here is the video of the CNN reporter arrest. I have included the description of the video below to help people find it:

A CNN reporter and crew have been arrested live on air while covering the Minneapolis protests over the killing of George Floyd.

Black correspondent Omar Jimenez had just shown a protester being arrested when about half a dozen white police officers surrounded him.

Mr Jimenez told the Minnesota State Patrol officers: “We can move back to where you like”, before explaining that he and his crew were members of the press, adding: “We’re getting out of your way.”

The journalist was handcuffed and led away alongside a producer and camera operator for CNN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClA57jWmQ&t=138s

accompanying story from same publication's site:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cnn-report...

>>aspenm+rD
Thanks! Yeah, so that seems potentially distasteful (and maybe with bad optics for the executive) but I just don't see what's illegal about it.

>>mehrda+fE
Arresting someone (restricting their movements) without probably cause that they are guilty of a crime is generally known as "false imprisonment", sticking them in a van and driving them away is generally known as "kidnapping", both are crimes.

If we believe the journalists that they were legally in the area, and the police either knew this or at least didn't have probable cause to support that they weren't legally in the area, I don't see how both of the above crimes were not committed.

>>gpm+hF
But do you actually believe police didn't suspect there was a crime? The video doesn't suggest that to me at all. Like this other person wrote [1], it doesn't seem unlikely that they were ordered to disperse or something under some public safety law and refused. (Or, I guess, you could say the reporter just didn't hear it and missed the memo. Doesn't really change it from the officer's perspective though.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23409320

>>mehrda+qH
I personally find it hard to believe that the police believed they had probably cause after the journalists told them that they had been instructed to stand there by another cop.

[Edit: This argument is a lot weaker than I thought it was because it's not entirely clear that the message I claim was communicated to the police was actually successfully communicated. See the replies/video below] Specifically I certainly don't believe that the journalists actually committed a crime if they had instructions from another cop that they could stand there. Those instructions would tend to negate any general order, and even if it didn't legally negate the order it would constitute entrapment and functionally negate it anyways. As a result I don't believe the police would think they had probable cause after they heard the camera crew claim they had received that instruction (and amusingly this is regardless of whether or not the camera crew had actually received the instruction they claimed to have received - to make it false arrest/kidnapping it suffices to be a probable enough claim that the police no longer believe they have probable cause).

A secondary weaker argument is that the governors order excluded the press from the curfew so even if the police had issued an order which included the press that order was illegal as applied to the press, and as a result they had no probable cause to arrest the press. It's weaker because to show they committed a crime under this theory I suspect (without checking Minnesota's statutes) you'd have to show they were aware of the contents of the governors order.

IANAL/I am not aware of the details of Minnesota's statutes - obviously details of the statues might change the above analysis in either direction.