Reporter ticketed, jabbed with police baton at LA protest

L.A. Taco reporter Lexis-Olivier Ray was cited by police, kettled and shoved with a police baton while covering a workers’ rights and immigration protest in Los Angeles, California, on May 1, 2026.

Thousands rallied in downtown LA for International Workers’ Day as part of nationwide “May Day Strong” demonstrations that also called for an end to the war in Iran and the immigration raids that have swept the city since June 2025. Later, demonstrators gathered outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, where immigrants are being held.

Ray told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that LA Police Department officers had already formed a skirmish line by the time he arrived at the detention center, where officers on motorcycles started ordering people onto the sidewalk.

In a video posted to the social platform Bluesky, an officer can be seen grabbing him and taking his ID. The officer then issued him a citation for being in the roadway, warning him that he would be taken to jail if he refused to sign it.

“I’m with the media,” Ray says in a separate video.

“It doesn’t matter,” the officer replies.

Ray said that he showed the officer his press badge, but the officer insisted that he had asked him multiple times to get off the street.

“He definitely singled me out,” Ray said. “I was the only person who was cited that I know of, out of a dozen or so people who were all in the street.”

Later, while Ray was documenting an arrest, an officer jabbed him in the stomach and chest. When he approached her to ask for her serial number, she pushed him again with her baton.

“Back up,” she tells him in another Bluesky video, as other officers seem to document the scene with cameras. She then gives him her information.

Later, LAPD officers kettled a group of mostly press, sealing them inside a tightened perimeter.

“We basically had nowhere to go, and we were surrounded by cops,” Ray said. “It was mostly just press at the end of the protest, very few protesters, so we should have never been kettled in the first place.”

Ray remained inside the kettle for about 15 minutes before being released and moved to a media staging area on the sidewalk.

“After I left, a journalist was arrested. I was able to document them taking him to a van or something to process them,” Ray said. “But I wasn’t there when he was actually being arrested, and I would have liked to be, and it wasn’t the most ideal spot to be.”

Ray has been involved in 14 incidents in LA documented by the Tracker, most recently on March 28, when he was kettled, pushed and threatened with arrest. He said what happened May 1 was “one of the most egregious examples” of how police have treated the press at demonstrations.

California law exempts journalists from dispersal orders and protects them from arrest or interference by police, including use of force. A federal preliminary injunction against the city is in place to uphold those protections.

LAPD did not immediately return a request for comment, but in a statement posted on May 1, it wrote: “The Los Angeles Police Department fully supports the rights of individuals to peacefully assemble and exercise their First Amendment rights.”

In an earlier statement following the March 28 “No Kings” rally — which resulted in nearly two dozen press freedom violations — Chief Jim McDonnell said that any use of force or allegations of mistreatment involving media members would be investigated and addressed.

“The LAPD recognizes the media’s right to cover events and makes reasonable efforts to accommodate, with those efforts consistent with our primary duty to maintain public safety and order,” the statement said.