Journalists Kathleen Gallagher and Jonathan Peltz got arrested as they were covering an Echo Park demonstration last year. Now, the journalists have litigated Los Angeles city in US federal court, citing a violation of their supreme rights guaranteed by the nation’s Constitution.
Both journos were working for Knock LA, an internet-based news outlet, as they covered protests about the eradication of an unsheltered location for the homeless community from Echo Park Lake banks last year. At the time, LA police found the gathering against the law, surrounded the demonstrators and journos there and started to detain and arrest them.
James Queally of The Los Angeles Times, Kate Cagle of the Spectrum News, and Lexis-Olivier Ray of LA Taco were among the people whom the cops detained. The cops also released everyone except for Gallagher and Peltz then and there itself. The two identified themselves as journos, and there were other journalists around them who were involved in comparable conduct. Despite that, the cops arrested them and did not let them go immediately.
Peltz told The Times Monday that he did not understand the decision of the cops about that issue. In a recent LA Times interview, Peltz stated that the cops who arrested them realized that they were journos.
The Los Angeles Police Department is yet to comment on this litigation. It has previously justified the arrests it made that night and acknowledged that it committed some mistakes in handling media members.
The LAPD had made a designated space for media back then, but the journos said that anybody in it could not observe the events between police and the demonstrations from there.
The cops used zip ties to bind the journalists by their wrists before searching them and taking their belongings from them. Then, the cops placed the journalists and other demonstrators on buses. The journalists stated that many of those protestors were not using face masks against coronavirus disease or not using those properly as they were also cuffed.
The cops placed them under arrest for over four hours. Later, Peltz visited a hospital in which medical staff attributed his swelling in the hands and arms to a potentially pinched nerve. As per the lawsuit, the hospital’s staff stated that the nerve issue occurred because the journalists were zip-tied for a long time.
The cops arrested over 180 individuals that day, mostly on official accusations that they did not obey a dispersal order. However, they did not prosecute those arrested since Los Angeles City Attorney Michael Feuer decided against filing charges.
The journalists filed the lawsuit with the assistance of a law clinic from the University of California, Irvine. They claimed that their arrests breached the policies of the LAPD for journos at demonstrations. As per the lawsuit, the arrests also fit an LAPD pattern of targeting, retaliating against and obstructing journos reporting on the actions of the officers of the department.
As per the lawsuit, the department violated the first amendment rights of the two journalists by apprehending them for doing their jobs to record the deeds of cops and demonstrators in public. It also claimed that law enforcement put the journalists through unlawful and disparate treatment just because Knock LA is no conventional media outlet. For your information, it is a not-for-profit news outlet started by Ground Game LA members.
An attorney of one of these journalists, Susan Seager, stated that the Los Angeles Police Department treated them like criminals as Knock LA does not belong to the so-called establishment press. Seager also asserted that the LAPD’s policy and the First Amendment to the Constitution do not necessitate reporters to carry formal LAPD press cards or work on behalf of the US mainstream media.
The arrest of several journalists was among the many recent encounters where police targeted these professionals. It was also an example of the harassment issue that media advocacy groups and journalists pointed to in 2021 as they championed the enactment of Senate Bill 98. For your information, SB 98 is now a law adding protections for journos covering demonstrations.
The Los Angeles Police Department produced a report about what happened that night. The department found mistakes in its law enforcement approach as well as blamed demonstrators and other forces for it escalating to a situation where arrests became essential as cops felt threatened.
Peltz described the law enforcement response to demonstrators and journalists as a misuse of power. Peltz also stated that he expects that the lawsuit would make the department responsible for its deeds.
As per Gallagher, over the last few years, there has been a concerning trend of the cops arresting or brutalizing journalists otherwise as they attempt to cover demonstrations. She expects that this lawsuit would aid in ending that trend as well.