https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/politics/tim-walz-minnesota-c...
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...
"20 minutes before the video you saw, police announced that the protest was closed and declared an unlawful assembly for the purposes of public safety. All people remaining after that warning were in violation of the law and the officers followed their instructions to clear the area."
That screams of "I'm trying to figure out a way to arrest you, but I can't think of a reason. I'm going to do it anyway." Police should not be arresting journalists (or citizens!) for no reason. Being released quickly doesn't suddenly make the original act okay. It just makes it so it doesn't get worse.
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.
There's a lot of hubub about qualified immunity these days, but it only shields individuals from individual civil responsibility, it does not shield organizations from organizational responsibility for the actions of individuals under their employ.
Chances are, parties would sue the organization anyway, as the individuals are unlikely to be able to pay significant damages.
> Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Press implies covering events and publishing about them. If that's not convincing enough, they spell it out in right to assemble, anyways. A press corps can assemble to cover events.
I don't think it implies that covering events has some kind of immunity. It's still subject to any general restriction on the assembly. The government can impose restrictions on the time, place, and manner of peaceful assembly, provided that constitutional safeguards are met. See https://www.loc.gov/law/help/peaceful-assembly/us.php
The police forces are managed by elected officials, who are elected by taxpayers. These politicians should be held to account by voters for either their lack of leadership on police abuse of force (my preference) or their lack of fiscal responsibility in allowing police abuse of force to continue, accruing large legal bills and settlements (and increased liability insurance costs, presumably).
[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.
At what timestamp did the journalists tell the police officers that they had been instructed to stand there by another cop? I must've missed that part when I watched the video.
While less legally defensible it is much of the reason why the BBC, FCC exist, why we have camera crews embed with troops.
I remembered this as being stated too the cops much clearer than it actually was. Likely I was mixing what they said with what the CNN reporters said later on when they were replaying this clip.