first_published_at,last_published_at,title,slug,latest_revision_created_at,charges,legal_orders,updates,categories,links,equipment_seized,equipment_broken,targeted_journalists,authors,date,exact_date_unknown,city,state,latitude,longitude,body,introduction,teaser,teaser_image,primary_video,image_caption,arrest_status,arresting_authority,release_date,detention_date,unnecessary_use_of_force,case_number,case_statuses,case_type,status_of_seized_equipment,is_search_warrant_obtained,actor,border_point,target_us_citizenship_status,denial_of_entry,stopped_previously,did_authorities_ask_for_device_access,did_authorities_ask_about_work,assailant,was_journalist_targeted,charged_under_espionage_act,subpoena_type,subpoena_statuses,name_of_business,third_party_business,legal_order_target,legal_order_type,legal_order_venue,status_of_prior_restraint,mistakenly_released_materials,type_of_denial,targeted_institutions,tags,target_nationality,workers_whose_communications_were_obtained,politicians_or_public_figures_involved 2021-05-03 15:05:36.198603+00:00,2022-05-11 18:44:28.251169+00:00,Journalist cited while reporting on Brooklyn Center protest,https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/journalist-cited-while-reporting-on-brooklyn-center-protest/,2022-05-11 18:44:28.177270+00:00,failure to obey: failure to obey a lawful order (charges pending as of 2021-04-13),,,"Arrest/Criminal Charge, Assault",,,,Naasir Akailvi (The Neighborhood Reporter),,2021-04-13,False,Brooklyn Center,Minnesota (MN),45.07608,-93.33273,"
Independent journalist Naasir Akailvi, who reports on social media as the Neighborhood Reporter, said he was detained and cited while reporting on a protest in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, on April 13, 2021.
Demonstrations had been held for several days outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department in response to the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop on April 11. Wright’s death occurred as a former police officer in nearby Minneapolis was on trial in the death of George Floyd, rekindling a wave of protests against racial injustice and police brutality that had started nearly a year earlier.
Akailvi told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that late on the night of April 13 he was reporting as police pushed protesters away from the police station up Humboldt Avenue. He told the Tracker that he believed police had issued dispersal orders earlier in the night, but he hadn’t considered leaving because of them. There was a curfew in effect starting at 10 p.m., according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune; it exempt members of the media.
Shortly before 11 p.m., Akailvi said, police had started to form a crowd-control technique called a “kettle,” which blocks people from leaving, in a gas station.
At one point, Akailvi said, he noticed that police were using batons to smash a car’s windows, and he moved closer to film the scene. Within seconds, he said, he felt someone grab him from behind. He said he was taken down to the ground and his wrists were constrained with zip ties.
Akailvi said that he repeated, “I’m press, I’m press,” and told police he had a press pass; he said he wears a self-made card that has his photograph and identifies him as a journalist. According to Akailvi, police responded by saying that a dispersal order had been issued for media.
Akailvi said police took his camera, mic and tripod. He was put in the back of a police car, he said, and told that he would be charged.
The journalist said that while a Minnesota State Patrol trooper who was in the car with him started writing up his paperwork, he heard over the police radio that law enforcement would not be taking members of the press to jail but would issue citations.
He said he was handed a citation for “failure to obey a lawful order” and that his equipment was returned when he was released. As he was leaving, he said, he again heard an announcement over the police radio directing law enforcement not to cite journalists. However, he said, the trooper told him he would need to fight his citation later.
“I still got my citation, and the cops who gave it to me, they said, you’re just going to have to go fight it in court,” Akailvi said.
Akailvi told the Tracker he has not yet taken steps to fight the charge. His citation says that he is required to appear in court, but no date has been set.
The Minnesota State Patrol did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Akailvi was detained again the following night along with a reporting partner while they were documenting continuing Brooklyn Center protests. The Tracker has documented that April 14 incident here.
On April 16, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring Minnesota State Patrol from arresting or threatening to arrest journalists and stating that journalists are not required to leave when there is a dispersal order.
In a statement in response to the court order, the MSP acknowledged that the agency was prohibited from enforcing dispersal orders against journalists.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documents journalists assaulted, arrested, struck by crowd control ammunition or tear gas or who had their equipment damaged in the course of reporting. Find all incidents related to Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality protests here.
Jonathan Mayorca, a journalist and co-owner of video news outlet The Convo Couch, was arrested by Los Angeles police while filming a demonstration on May 30, 2020.
The protest was part of Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality demonstrations across the country. The protests were sparked by the release of a video showing a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a Black man, during an arrest. Floyd was later pronounced dead in a hospital.
Mayorca told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker he arrived at the protest in the Fairfax area of Beverly Boulevard at around 3:30 p.m. along with two crew members, including his sister, Fiorella. Mayorca immediately began to livestream the demonstration. Video shows protesters gathering, holding signs, facing off with a line of police officers and then walking with their hands up and chanting.
The protesters moved west down Beverly Boulevard, and Mayorca and his crew followed. At around 4 p.m the protesters went down an alley near Beverly Boulevard and North Fairfax Avenue because the police had blocked off all other streets, Mayorca said. Officers with the Los Angeles Police Department then blocked all exits, or kettled the protesters in the alley. Mayorca and his crew were prevented from leaving.
Mayorca said he told the police he was a member of the press, but they ignored him. Mayorca was wearing a press badge on a lanyard hanging from his neck.
“We told them multiple times, ‘we’re press, we’re press’,” he said.
Protesters and Mayorca and his crew knelt on the ground in the alley as police officers watched them from a “line in front and behind us,” he said.
“One protester was crying hysterically,” Mayorca told the Tracker. “She threw up.”
Soon after being kettled, LAPD officers moved into the alley. Mayorca did not hear a dispersal order and was not given an opportunity to leave before he was arrested, according to a class-action lawsuit Mayorca joined against the LAPD for alleged federal and state constitutional rights violations. Mayorca’s video of the incident does not appear to pick up an audible warning from police.
Officers grabbed Mayorca, pushed him to the ground, and arrested him, he said. The officers’ actions broke the microphone attachment for his camera.
“It was the height of aggressiveness,” Mayorca said.
According to Mayorca, an officer said his camera equipment was broken before his interaction with police.
The police used zip-tie handcuffs to detain him.
Here’s the quick clip of us getting arrested as the cops lied and kettled the people into an alley. People were asking where to go & the cops led them to more cops. They refused to let us go even though we had badges and told them. pic.twitter.com/nfYvTl561J
— Fiorella Isabel🌹🔥 (@Fiorella_im) June 1, 2020
“The police put me against a wall and searched me,” Mayorca said.
The police brought Mayorca to the Van Nuys police station, where he was held for about two hours and then released, he said. Mayorca said he repeatedly complained about the tightness of his zip-tie handcuffs, but the police ignored him.
“It cut off my circulation a bit,” Mayorca said. “It was uncomfortably tight.”
He was issued a citation for failure to obey a lawful order, a misdemeanor.
Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said in June that he would use a “non-punitive approach” to resolve the cases of peaceful protesters outside the court system.
Jorge Gonzalez, a civil rights lawyer who's part of the team representing protesters, said the city has tentatively agreed to dismiss the charges if protesters complete an online course on the First Amendment. Gonzalez told the Tracker Aug. 3 that he is rejecting the city’s condition and awaiting the city’s response.
However, Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for City Attorney Feuer, said protesters will be invited to a voluntary, virtual conversation about policing, bias, and inequity organized with the help of local cultural, academic and criminal justice institutions.
Mayorca is a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the LAPD for allegedly violating protesters’ constitutional rights to peacefully assemble and protest, using excessive force, and holding protesters in unlawful conditions of confinement. When reached for comment, LAPD spokesperson Officer Norma Eisenman said the “department does not comment on pending complaints.”
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is documenting several hundred incidents of journalists assaulted, arrested, struck by crowd control ammunition or tear gas or had their equipment damaged while covering protests across the country related to the death of George Floyd while in police custody. Find all of these cases here.
Journalist Fiorella Isabel Mayorca, co-owner of video news outlet The Convo Couch, was kettled and arrested by police on May 30, 2020, while covering a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles protest was part of Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality demonstrations around the country. The protests kicked off after the release of a video showing a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a Black man, during an arrest. Floyd was later pronounced dead in a hospital.
Mayorca arrived at the protest at Beverly Boulevard in the Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles around 3:30 p.m. with two crew members, including her brother Jonathan. She and Jonathan began to film the demonstrations. Mayorca’s footage shows demonstrators on the boulevard chanting, holding signs, facing off with a line of police officers and then walking with their hands up.
When the demonstrators started to move west on Beverly Boulevard, Mayorca followed and continued filming. At about 4 p.m., protesters headed down an alleyway near Beverly Boulevard and North Fairfax Avenue. The Los Angeles Police Department had blocked off all other streets and directed protesters in the direction of the alleyway verbally and with their hands, Mayorca said. The police then kettled the demonstrators in the alley, blocking off exits and trapping protesters.
“They started to kettle people and we thought we should be OK because we’re press,” Mayorca said.
Mayorca wore a press badge that hung from a lanyard around her neck. She and her brother told police officers they were press, but they were ignored, she said.
Soon, Los Angeles police rushed in. Video of the police entering the alleyway reviewed by the Tracker does not appear to pick up an audible warning from police. Officers began arresting protesters and journalists, including Mayorca and her brother.
Mayorca was put in handcuffs and then pushed up against a wall by a police officer, she said.
“[A woman officer was] seriously groping me. She went in my underwear. They were acting like we were hiding drugs,” she told the Tracker.
Officers placed zip-tie handcuffs on Mayorca. She said they felt extremely tight.
“The worst part of it was the wrists,” Mayorca said. “The way they placed it, it was like our wrists were going in different directions, not a normal position. It hurt.”
After spending about an hour in a police wagon, she and her brother were taken to the Van Nuys police station in Los Angeles, where she said she was held for about two hours and then released.
Mayorca was given a citation for failure to obey a lawful order, a misdemeanor charge.
The Tracker asked the LAPD to comment on Mayorca’s arrest, including allegations that she was groped while detained by police.
In response, the department referred the Tracker to a statement published in June.
“The Los Angeles Police Department continues to investigate allegations of misconduct, violations of Department policy, and excessive force during the recent civil unrest,” the statement reads. “The Department has assigned 40 investigators to this effort and we will look into every complaint thoroughly and hold every officer accountable for their actions.”
In June, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said his office would be resolving the cases of peaceful protesters arrested during recent Black Lives Matter protests in a “non-punitive” way.
Jorge Gonzalez, a civil rights attorney who’s part of a team representing protesters arrested during the recent demonstrations, said the Los Angeles City Attorney has tentatively agreed to dismiss the charges, on the condition that protesters complete an online course on the First Amendment. Gonzalez said Aug. 3 that the team is rejecting the city’s condition and awaiting the city’s response.
Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for City Attorney Feuer, told the Tracker protesters will be invited to a voluntary, virtual conversation about policing, bias, and inequity organized with the help of local cultural, academic and criminal justice institutions.
Mayorca’s brother Jonathan is a named plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the LAPD for allegedly violating protesters’ constitutional rights to peacefully assemble and protest, using excessive force, and holding protesters in unlawful conditions of confinement. When reached for comment, LAPD spokesperson Officer Norma Eisenman said the “department does not comment on pending complaints.”
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is documenting several hundred incidents of journalists assaulted, arrested, struck by crowd control ammunition or tear gas or had their equipment damaged while covering protests across the country related to the death of George Floyd while in police custody. Find all of these cases here.