Independent journalist arrested, injured while covering Texas protest

Independent journalist Jeff Zavala was thrown to the ground by police and arrested on March 8, 2024, while reporting on a protest at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

That evening, demonstrators gathered outside a downtown hotel to call on the festival’s organizers to cut its sponsorship partnership with the U.S. Army (which it later did).

Zavala told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that the protest was peaceful. But as he filmed from the sidewalk in front of the driveway to the hotel’s entrance, he said police officers on bicycles suddenly surrounded the group.

“I was literally in the act of filming the event,” he told the Tracker. Zavala, who was reporting for the platform Austin Indymedia, believes he was clearly operating as a journalist because he had a camera, gimbal and microphone.

But he said he was unable to move out of the driveway before being grabbed, tackled and arrested by police officers. “During the arrest, I was thrown to the ground, pinned by multiple officers, and placed in extreme physical pain, despite offering no resistance,” Zavala told the Tracker.

He spent the night in prison before being bailed out with the help of the Austin Lawyers Guild.

Zavala’s account is confirmed by footage of the arrest that he published in a 2025 short documentary about the incident.

In the documentary, police body-camera footage shows an officer speaking about Zavala: “I had his fucking wrist up here on the back of his head, and I didn’t care if I was going to snap his fucking shoulder out.”

The journalist said he was never given a verbal order from police before the arrest, and that he was later charged with blocking a highway and resisting arrest. Zavala rejects the charges, the former of which was dropped on March 11 and the latter of which was dropped on June 27.

During the arrest, he said his headphones and gimbal were damaged. Zavala’s arms and three ribs were also bruised, which meant he was unable to work for a few months following the incident.

“Ever since then, there’s been this consistent pain in my arm and my shoulder,” he said. “I still feel the lingering effects — emotionally and physically.”

Zavala said he wanted to file a lawsuit over the incident after it happened, but he ultimately did not. “It just seemed so complicated and expensive and cumbersome,” he said. But in September 2025, Zavala said he began the process to try to expunge his record, which he said was approved the following month.

The Austin Police Department did not reply to a request for comment.