Two American reporters who were arrested at a restaurant last year in Ferguson, Missouri while reporting on protests there have been charged with trespassing and interfering with a police officer and ordered to appear in court. Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery and Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly were busted as they typed on their laptops.
Advertisement
Lowery and Reilly face up to $1,000 fine and a year in county jail.
It was in this context that Lowery, who is now in Ferguson covering the protests, received his summons-dated August 6, 2015-which states that he is being charged with trespassing on private property and interfering with a police officer because he did not comply with “commands” to exit.
St. Louis County police came under fire for heavy-handed dealings with journalists during the demonstrations.
“You’d have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident”, Baron added. He tweeted Monday that there should never have been an arrest in the first place.
“I maintained from the first day that our detention was illegal and unnecessary”, the Post quoted Lowery as saying on Monday.
The shooting death of the unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown drew national attention as he was killed by a white police officer on 9 August 2014.
A Reason magazine reporter, along with other witnesses, also supported Yingst’s account. They allegedly did not leave the restaurant immediately when officers ordered them to. “That was an abuse of police authority”. “This latest action represents contemptible overreaching by prosecutors who seem to have no regard for the role of journalists seeking to cover a major story and following normal practice”. I would imagine that both Lowery and Reilly will have pretty strong defenses, and that St. Louis County may end up handing over more taxpayer funds to both of them before this is over.
In a July 15 Huffington Post interview, Lowery said that obstacles he and Reilly have faced in trying to obtain basic information about their cases provide “a window into a larger systemic issue”.
“At least we know St. Louis County knows how to file charges,” Washington bureau chief Ryan Grim and senior politics editor Sam Stein of the Huffington Post wrote, denouncing the decision.
At the time, the Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, said that there had been “absolutely no justification for his arrest”.
Advertisement
Reilly’s charges were announced several hours later.
