NYPD arrests photojournalist, charges him with disorderly conduct

Photojournalist Amr Alfiky and four other photographers filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department on Aug. 5, 2021, in response to their unlawful arrests or assaults at the hands of police while documenting police activity in 2020.

Alfiky, who was a photo editor at ABC News and a contributor to Reuters and The New York Times at the time of his arrest, was taking video of a man being arrested on Feb. 11, 2020, in New York’s Lower East Side neighborhood when police took him into custody. The disorderly conduct charge against him was dropped in May 2020.

On Aug. 5, the National Press Photographers Association and the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP filed a suit on behalf of the five photographers alleging that the NYPD had violated their First Amendment rights.

The five photojournalists named as plaintiffs are :

• Alfiky, who was also assaulted by an officer on May 29, 2020
• Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi
• Mel D. Cole
• Jae Donnelly
• Adam Gray

“The right of journalists to record the activities of police officers engaged in their official duties in public places is fundamental," attorney Robert D. Balin of Davis Wright Tremaine said in a statement emailed to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. "Yet the NYPD has demonstrated a longstanding custom, pattern, and practice of unlawfully interfering with this First Amendment right and that pattern was revealed with dreadful clarity during the George Floyd protests.”

According to the complaint, reviewed by the Tracker, the photographers are seeking compensatory and punitive damages as well as an injunction directing the City of New York to effectively train officers on the right of the press and public to record police activity in public locations, cease arresting or using physical force against photographers and discipline the officers involved in such instances.

“There has been a longstanding failure on the part of the City to train, supervise, and discipline police who interfere with the media trying to do their jobs,” NPPA General Counsel Mickey Osterreicher said in a statement. “With this action, we're asking the court to finally call the NYPD to account for its unlawful practices.”

The NYPD did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

The New York Police Department dropped the charge of disorderly conduct against photojournalist Amr Alfiky on May 17, 2020, National Press Photographer Association General Counsel Mickey Osterreicher told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Alfiky, who is a photo editor at ABC News and a contributor to Reuters and The New York Times, was taking video of a man being arrested on Feb. 11 in New York’s Lower East Side neighborhood when police took him into custody.

Osterreicher said that before being dropped, the hearing date for Alfiky’s case was pushed multiple times in the spring and early summer because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The case was ultimately dismissed as a result of the New York Police Department’s “failure to timely file a legally satisfactory accusatory instrument with the court,” Osterreicher said.