IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – An Iowa journalist covering a racial justice protest was temporarily blinded after a police officer threw pepper spray at her and was arrested, despite repeatedly saying she was just doing her job, according to with video played Tuesday at the reporter’s trial.
Video of the camera of the body captured by Des Moines Police Sgt. Natale Chiodo showed Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri in custody on May 31, 2020, her eyes burning with pepper spray. She said she had the newspaper and asked police officer Luke Wilson why he was arresting her, adding that she was in pain and could not see.
“This is my job,” says Sahouri in the video. “I’m just doing my job. I’m a journalist.”
Sahouri’s defense showed the video to jurors on the second day of a trial in which Sahouri and her ex-boyfriend, Spenser Robnett, are accused of non-dispersion and interference in official acts. The accusation drew widespread criticism media and human rights defenders, who say the accusations are an attack on press freedom. Both face fines and potentially even a prison sentence if convicted.
Officer Wilson testified that he did not record the arrest on his body camera and did not notify a supervisor as required by department policy. But Chiodo’s body camera captured the scene shortly after Wilson arrested Sahouri.
Chiodo said he did not arrest a second Register reporter with Sahouri, Katie Akin, because she was not disobeying orders and “looked very scared”, telling him to leave.
Akin testified that she was surprised to see a pepper spray police officer and arrest Sahouri because “I didn’t understand that we were breaking any laws or doing anything wrong.” Akin said he started shouting to the police that they were journalists and showing him a press badge.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation saw the video as powerful proof that Sahouri “was arrested while doing her reporting on historic protests.”
“This arrest should never have been made and the prosecutor should never have made these charges,” the group said in a tweet.
Des Moines Register executive editor Carol Hunter testified that the newspaper appointed Sahouri to cover the protest at the Merle Hay mall days after the death of George Floyd, a black man from Minneapolis who was pronounced dead after a white officer put on his knee on your neck for about nine. minutes. Hunter said Sahouri did his job “very well” that night, reporting observations and images of the event live on Twitter.
Hunter said Sahouri did not violate the newspaper’s policy by allowing her boyfriend to join her at the event, which she said made sense, as it was a dangerous situation. She said the newspaper did not issue any formal credentials to Sahouri and that employees only had security badges, which were optional in size. Authorities said Sahouri was not using press credentials.
Wilson, an 18-year veteran of the Des Moines Police Department, said he responded to the protest and found a “tumultuous mob” that was breaking shop windows, throwing stones and water bottles at police officers and running in different directions. He said his unit was instructed to clear a parking lot and he used a device known as a nebulizer to cover the area with clouds of pepper spray.
He said the irritating chemists worked to force most of the crowd to disperse, including Robnett, but decided that Sahouri needed to be arrested when he did not leave. Wilson said he did not know that Sahouri was a journalist.
Wilson said he grabbed it with his left hand while his nebulizer was in his right hand. Wilson said Robnett came back and tried to get Sahouri out of his reach, and Wilson said he implanted more pepper spray than “incapacitated” Robnett.
Sahouri was taken to prison in a police van and released hours later.
Under interrogation by defense lawyer Nicholas Klinefeldt, Wilson said he accused Sahouri of interference because she briefly pulled his left arm while he was arresting her. He acknowledged that he did not mention this statement in his police report on the arrest.
Wilson said he rarely used his body camera during his normal work at the city airport, mistakenly believed that she had recorded Sahouri’s arrest and was not familiar with the details of the department’s body camera policy.
Cameras are always capturing video when activated and can retrieve videos of incidents that were not recorded later, if they have not yet been deleted. Law enforcement officers who do not record the incidents they should have are required to notify supervisors, who can then try to retrieve the video that has no audio.
Prosecutors say Sahouri and Robnett ignored a police order to leave the area that was broadcast on a public sound system about 90 minutes before their arrests.
The defense argues that the order was intended only to clear an intersection where the protesters were blocking a vehicle. Akin, the Register reporter who was not arrested, testified that she did not have the impression that she should leave and continued her reporting.
The video of the body camera shown in the courtroom showed police officers shouting at the protesters to get out of the intersection and instructing them to make peace. Robnett and Sahouri did as they were told.
A separate order to disperse could be heard faintly in the background video – so silent that even a policeman testifying on the charge seemed to have a hard time deciphering it. But prosecutors argued that the message was loudest at the scene.