IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – An Iowa journalist covering a racial justice protest was temporarily blinded after a police officer shot him with pepper spray and was jailed despite being repeatedly told he was only doing his part. work, according to a video played on Tuesday the trial of the reporter.
Body camera video captured by Sergeant Des Moines. Natale Chiodo showed Des Moines Register journalist Andrea Sahouri, arrested on May 31, 2020, with her eyes burned by pepper spray. He said he was in the newspaper and asked Officer Luke Wilson why he was arresting him and added that he was in pain and could not see.
“This is my job,” Sahouri says in the video. “I am just doing my job. I’m a journalist. “
Sahouri’s defense played the video for the jurors on the second day of a trial in which Sahouri and her ex-boyfriend, Spenser Robnett, are accused of not dispersing and entering official proceedings. The prosecution has received widespread criticism of media and human rights defenders, who claim the charges are an attack on press freedom. The couple faces fines and may even be in jail if convicted.
Agent Wilson stated that he did not record the arrest on his body’s camera and did not notify any supervisor as required by the department’s policy. But Chiodo’s body camera captured the scene shortly after Wilson arrested Sahouri.
Chiodo said she did not arrest a second Registry reporter with Sahouri, Katie Akin, because she did not disobey orders and “seemed very scared,” telling him to leave.
Akin stated that he was surprised to see a pepper agent and arrest Sahouri because he “did not understand that we were breaking any law or doing anything.” Akin said he started calling police that they were journalists and that they were displaying a press badge.
The Foundation for Freedom of the Press called the video powerful evidence that Sahouri “was arrested while doing his job reporting on historic protests.”
“This arrest should never have been made and the prosecutor should never have filed these charges,” the group said in a tweet.
Des Moines Register executive editor Carol Hunter said the newspaper assigned Sahouri coverage of the protest at Merle Hay Mall days after the death of George Floyd, a black man from Minneapolis who was pronounced dead. after a white officer put his knee on his neck for about nine minutes. Hunter said Sahouri did his job “very well” that night, reporting live from observations and footage of the event on Twitter.
Hunter said Sahouri did not violate newspaper policy by allowing her boyfriend to join her in the act, which she said made sense given it was a dangerous situation. He said the newspaper had not issued any formal credentials to Sahouri and that employees only wore safety badges at the time, which were optional. Authorities have said Sahouri was not wearing press credentials.
Wilson, an 18-year veteran of the Des Moines police department, said he responded to the protest and found a “turbulent mob” that broke shop windows, threw rocks and water bottles at officers and ran in different directions. . He said his unit was asked to clean a parking lot and used a device known as a nebulizer to cover the area with pepper clouds.
She said the chemical irritants worked to force most of the crowd to disperse, including Robnett, but that she decided Sahouri should be arrested when she did not leave. Wilson said he was unaware that Sahouri was a journalist.
Wilson said he grabbed her with his left hand while his fog was in his right hand. Wilson said Robnett came back and tried to get Sahouri out of his reach, and Wilson said he deployed more pepper spray that “disabled” Robnett.
Sahouri was taken to jail in a police van and released hours later.
In cross-examination by defense attorney Nicholas Klinefeldt, Wilson said he accused Sahouri of interference because she briefly pulled her left arm apart while holding her. He acknowledged that he did not mention this statement in his police report on the arrest.
Wilson said he only rarely used the body camera during his normal work at the city airport, mistakenly believed he had registered Sahouri’s arrest and was unaware of the details of the department’s body camera policy.
Cameras always capture video when they are activated and can retrieve video of incidents that were not recorded later if they have not yet been deleted. Agents who do not record incidents they should have should 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 over the megaphone about 90 minutes before their arrests.
The defense argues that the order was only intended to clear an intersection where protesters were blocking a squadron car. Akin, the Registry journalist who was not arrested, stated that she did not have the impression that she was supposed to leave and continued to report.
The body camera video played in court showed officers calling on protesters to leave the intersection and tell them to be peaceful. Robnett and Sahouri complied.
A separate scatter order was faintly heard in the background video, so quiet that even an officer testifying for the prosecution appeared to be struggling to distinguish him. But prosecutors argued the message was stronger at the scene.