Photojournalist arrested covering Las Vegas protest

Ellen Schmidt, a photojournalist on staff at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and Bridget Bennett, a freelance photographer working for Agence France-Presse, were arrested on May 29, 2020, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The journalists were covering protests that broke out in response to the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

A video posted on Twitter shows a group of Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers shoving and grabbing Schmidt, and throwing Bennett to the ground, before arresting the women.

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo later told the Nevada Independent that Schmidt and Bennett had ignored LVMPD officers’ orders to disperse and did not identify themselves as members of the media. But in an interview with the Review-Journal, Schmidt said that she and Bennett had in fact repeatedly identified themselves as a member of the press and were wearing their press badges at the time that they were arrested.

“It is appalling that Las Vegas police officers, who have nothing to do with what happened in Minnesota, would so forcefully take into custody two people who were obviously working photojournalists and posed no threat to law enforcement or public safety,” Review-Journal executive editor Glenn Cook said in a statement. “They never should have been touched, let alone arrested and then booked into jail.”

Schmidt and Bennett were each charged with “failure to disperse,” a misdemeanor. Although people charged with “failure to disperse” are supposed to be released immediately, rather than being held in jail on bail, both Schmidt and Bennett were held in jail overnight and only released on the morning of May 30.

Las Vegas Chief Justice of the Peace Suzan Bacum told the Review-Journal that the two journalists should not have been held overnight in jail and blamed the situation on a miscommunication between the police and the court system.

“These people should have never been held on these misdemeanors,” she said. “It’s a travesty.”

Richard Karpel, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, condemned the arrests in a statement:

“The press serve a vital, constitutionally protected role during moments of national strife and civil disobedience,” he said. “Journalists put themselves at risk to inform citizens about protestors’ grievances and their actions, and to observe whether law enforcement personnel are operating within the bounds of the law. The arrest of journalists working in a public forum at a highly newsworthy event is absolutely unacceptable."