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 2021-04-19 17:28:32.656010+00:00,2022-05-13 15:43:39.618362+00:00,"Photographer arrested, cited while covering Brooklyn Center protests",https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/photographer-arrested-cited-while-covering-brooklyn-center-protests/,2022-05-13 15:43:39.542489+00:00,failure to obey: failure to follow a lawful order (charges dropped as of 2021-05-21),,"(2021-05-21 00:00:00+00:00) Charges dropped against photographer arrested, cited while covering Brooklyn Center protests","Arrest/Criminal Charge, Assault",,,,Adam Gray (South West News Service),,2021-04-13,False,Brooklyn Center,Minnesota (MN),45.07608,-93.33273,"
Adam Gray, chief photojournalist for UK-based South West News Service, was pushed to the ground, handcuffed, and cited with failure to follow a lawful order while he was covering protests in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, on April 13, 2021.
Protests began following the fatal shooting of a Black man, Daunte Wright, by a white Brooklyn Center Police Department officer on April 11.
Gray was covering police pushing protesters north on Humboldt Avenue away from the police station around 10:30 p.m. when law enforcement directed protesters and press to leave, Gray said in an email sent to the Committee to Protect Journalists. CPJ is a founding partner of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
Brooklyn Center, which is near Minneapolis, St. Paul and Minneapolis were under a 10 p.m. curfew; journalists were exempt, according to news reports.
At approximately 10:38 p.m., law enforcement rushed people down the block, and shortly after pushed people into the area of a Kisch Oil Company gas station, screaming at them to “get out” and “leave,” Gray said, noting that he was documenting the unfolding chaos.
The photojournalist said that he was walking backward away from law enforcement so that he could keep them in view and take photographs.
“I wasn’t going to turn my back and run because that’s usually when they chase you,” said Gray, who was arrested last year while covering protests in New York City.
Gray said that as the crowd moved away from the approaching law enforcement, it became apparent that police were encroaching in on the crowd, catching Gray and protesters in a “kettle,” a technique where police surround a group from all sides.
“I was very clearly press,” the photojournalist said, noting that he also had two large cameras around his neck in addition to press credentials issued by the New York Police Department.
A video Gray later posted to his Instagram account of the moments leading up to his arrest shows Minnesota State Patrol in full riot gear charging at him and shoving him onto a patch of grass. In the video, Gray can be heard saying that he is a member of the press and was trying to return to his car.
Gray said he had been working near several other journalists, though his colleagues had managed to escape the kettle and subsequent detention.
State Patrol officials ziptied Gray’s hands while he was facedown in the grass before rolling him over and standing him up, the photojournalist said.
Gray said he was then taken to a patrol car where a state patrol officer cited Gray for “failure to obey a lawful order.” While the order was being written, Gray said he heard a voice on the radio that said members of the press should be charged with failure to disperse, rather than unlawful assembly.
While Gray was still in the car, and after the citation was written, a voice came on the radio and instructed law enforcement not to issue citations to the press, and to release them, Gray said. The photojournalist asked the officer who wrote his citation then a senior officer if the citation should be deleted, and the senior officer said to leave it, Gray said.
Gray’s citation, which was reviewed by CPJ, requires him to schedule a court appearance within 30 days of the citation’s issue. Mickey Osterreicher, General Counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, told CPJ via email that he is hopeful that they are in the process of resolving the charge.
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.
Adam Gray, chief photojournalist for UK-based South West News Service, was pushed to the ground and arrested while covering protests in New York, New York, on May 30, 2020.
Protests that began in Minnesota on May 26 spread across the country, sparked by a video showing a police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a black man, during an arrest the day before. Floyd was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Gray told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he had been documenting protests all day, and was photographing demonstrations in and around Union Square in Manhattan at around 10:40 p.m.
When Gray reached the front of a crowd of protesters on 13th Street, he said officers started charging the crowd and arresting protesters in what he described as “pandemonium.”
“I’m photographing this happening and I turn and I see this big guy, this cop coming at me,” Gray said. As the officer pushed him to the ground, two of the three cameras he was carrying “smashed” to the ground off his shoulders. Gray noted that luckily the only damage to the equipment was a broken UV lens filter.
Two additional officers then came up and assisted the first in restraining Gray and arresting him, he said.
I now have more images of my arrest whilst photographing protests on Saturday from a NYC colleague. Three cameras hanging off me and a press card in a lanyard around my neck (clear and visible on the other side) @SWNS @TheSun @GreensladeR @KateEMcCann pic.twitter.com/uvoil0DdNT
— Adam Gray (@agrayphoto) June 5, 2020
“I have a lanyard that has my foreign press card in it around my neck,” Gray said. “They stood me up and another guy in white came up — I think he was a more senior officer — and I’m shouting at him as well that I’m foreign press, that I’m a photographer.”
Gray said they asked him whether his press pass was issued by the NYPD, and that he responded no, that it was a foreign press card issued by the US State Department. Gray told the Tracker that the officer said something to the effect of, “Alright, no no no, I’ll take him away.”
Officers then took Gray down the street and passed him off to another officer who was designated his arresting officer and was eventually listed on all of Gray’s arrest reports.
After being stripped of his equipment and re-cuffed, Gray waited on a prison transport bus with 50 to 60 others for half an hour until the rest of the seats were filled. He said he then waited an additional hour outside One Police Plaza due to the volume of arrestees that night.
“At this point, I feel like I’m just in the system and we’re going through with it, I’m being booked and that’s what’s happening. There’s nobody else there that I can speak to or remonstrate with,” Gray said.
After being processed, he was placed in a holding cell with 50-70 people crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder. Gray said that he still had a face mask in order to combat the spread of coronavirus, but most others did not.
Gray was released at around 9:30 a.m. — nearly 11 hours after his arrest — with a desk appearance ticket for unlawful assembly, a misdemeanor punishable by up to three months in jail and a $500 fine.
When asked for comment, an NYPD spokesperson directed the Tracker to the “30 minute mark” of a press briefing held by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea on June 3.
Around that point in the recording, Shea says: “The only thing that I might add on the point of the press: We’re doing the best we can, the difficult situation. We 100 percent respect the rights of the press. Unfortunately we’ve had some people purporting to be press that are actually lying, if you can believe that. So sometimes these things take a second — maybe too long — to sort out.”
The Manhattan district attorney announced in a press release on June 5 that his office would not prosecute unlawful assembly or disorderly conduct arrests.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is documenting several hundred total incidents of journalists assaulted, arrested, struck by crowd control ammunition or tear gas or who 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.
British photojournalist Adam Gray is arrested near Union Square in New York City on May 30, 2020.
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