Incident details
- Date of incident
- May 30, 2026
- Location
- Newark, New Jersey
Photojournalist Angelina Katsanis, in wheelchair, negotiates to exit through police lines after being injured at a May 30, 2026, immigration protest in Newark, New Jersey. Her gear bag was stolen that night, and an officer was later charged with theft.
Photojournalist Angelina Katsanis’ equipment bag was stolen after she was injured covering a protest outside a private immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, on May 30, 2026.
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport and the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability announced June 4 that Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Sgt. Darryl Brown had been charged in connection with the theft.
Protests outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility began May 22, when many detainees went on a hunger strike. Members of Congress, state and local lawmakers and rights groups have alleged dire conditions at the facility.
Federal officers responded to the protests with chemical irritants, physical force and arrests, as did state police in the days that followed. The Department of Homeland Security has denied allegations of detainee mistreatment.
According to multiple news reports and an online fundraiser posted on her behalf, Katsanis — on assignment for The Associated Press — was covering the protest on the front line when she was hit in the knee by a wooden board, suffering an injury that made it difficult to walk.
She fled the area as a line of New Jersey State Police advanced, and left behind her equipment bag. It held a camera, two lenses, six external storage cards, six external batteries and other gear, as well as a keychain with an Apple AirTag — clearly labeled with her name and contact information.
She sought assistance from medics at the scene, who provided her with a wheelchair. With the help of other journalists, she went back to the front line and negotiated with state police in riot gear to let her through to retrieve her bag and seek further medical care, in a scene captured on video.
However, the bag was no longer there.
“I checked my AirTag and the bag was already on a highway pretty far away at that point,” Katsanis, who was treated at a nearby hospital, told The Associated Press. “Right away, I had a feeling it was the police because they were the only ones with access to that area.”
She continued to track the bag to a house in Sparta, New Jersey, which was later determined to be Brown’s residence.
Katsanis told The New York Times that her boyfriend and another photographer tracked down the AirTag, eventually locating it — without the other items — on the side of the road, with her name and contact information still clearly legible.
“That was a pretty clear sign to me that this was a theft and not just a law enforcement officer holding onto this bag for safekeeping,” she told the Times.
After Katsanis contacted police, a search of Brown’s residence found some of the gear she had reported missing, “including several items that still had the victim’s name and phone number printed on labels affixed to them,” according to the attorney general’s statement.
The statement added that Brown had been assigned to the Delaney Hall area in an official capacity on May 30, and his body-worn camera “shows him interacting with a dark colored bag, consistent with the description of the victim’s belongings.”
Brown faces one count of third-degree theft, which carries a sentence of three to five years in prison and a fine of up to $15,000, the attorney general’s office said. He is set to appear in court on July 7, according to a complaint reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
A GoFundMe set up to assist Katsanis had raised nearly $20,000 as of June 10. In addition to the costs of replacing her equipment, it also listed expenses related to replacing her car and house keys, accessing and towing her car, and medical care.
Katsanis’ attorney, Wylie Stecklow, told the Tracker on June 8 that the authorities still had possession of her equipment as evidence, “but we are hoping to get them back in the next week or so.”
Stecklow praised the response of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office to the theft of her bag.
“The NJAG office took this very seriously and within two days of us first contacting them, they had obtained a search warrant, executed it, and arrested the individual,” he said.
Essex County Prosecutor Theodore Stephens II said Brown had been suspended without pay pending the outcome of the investigation. “Conduct that undermines the public’s trust in law enforcement is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogs press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
