IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – An Iowa reporter who reported on a protest for racial justice was temporarily blinded after a police officer shot pepper spray on her and then was jailed despite repeatedly telling him she was just doing her job , according to a video played Tuesday to the reporter’s trial.
Body camera video captured by Des Moines Police Sgt. Natale Chiodo showed Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri in custody on May 31, 2020, her eyes burning from pepper spray. She said she was with the newspaper and asked Officer Luke Wilson why he was arresting her, adding that she was in pain and couldn’t see.
“This is my job,” said Sahouri in the video. ‘I just do my job. I am a journalist. “
Sahouri’s defense played the video to jurors on the second day of a trial accusing Sahouri and her ex-boyfriend, Spenser Robnett, of not disseminating and interfering with official acts. The Prosecution has received much criticism from media and human rights activists, who say the allegations are an attack on freedom of the press. The couple faces fines and possibly even jail time 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 detained Sahouri.
Chiodo said he had not arrested a second Register reporter with Sahouri, Katie Akin, because she disobeyed orders and “seemed very scared,” and told her to leave instead.
Akin testified that she was surprised to see an officer with pepper spray and arrested Sahouri because “I didn’t understand that we were breaking laws or doing anything wrong.” Akin said she started yelling at police that they were journalists and showing a press badge.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation called the video powerful evidence that Sahouri was “arrested while covering historic protests.”
“This arrest should never have taken place and the prosecutor should never have filed these charges,” the group said in a tweet.
Des Moines Register editor-in-chief Carol Hunter testified that the newspaper had assigned Sahouri to cover the protest at Merle Hay Mall days after the death of George Floyd, a Minneapolis black man pronounced dead after a white officer laid his knee in the neck for about nine hours. minutes. Hunter said Sahouri did her job “very well” that night, reporting observations and footage from the event live on Twitter.
Hunter said Sahouri has not violated newspaper policy by allowing her boyfriend to be with her, which she said made sense given that it was a dangerous situation. She said the newspaper had not provided any formal credentials to Sahouri and that employees at the time only had security badges, which were optional to take with them. Authorities have said Sahouri did not carry press references.
Wilson, an 18-year veteran of the Des Moines Police Department, said he responded to the protest and found a “riotous crowd” smashing shop windows, throwing rocks and water bottles at officers, and running in different directions. He said his unit had been told to clear a parking space, and he used a device known as a nebulizer to cover the area with clouds of pepper spray.
He said the chemical irritants worked to force most of the crowd to disperse, including Robnett, but he decided Sahouri should be arrested when she didn’t leave. Wilson said he did not know Sahouri was a journalist.
Wilson said he grabbed her with his left hand with his smoke machine in his right hand. Wilson said Robnett came back and tried to get Sahouri out of his grip, and Wilson said he used more pepper spray that “incapacitated” Robnett.
Sahouri was taken to prison in a police van and released hours later.
Under cross-examination by lawyer Nicholas Klinefeldt, Wilson said he accused Sahouri of meddling for briefly pulling her left arm away while he was arresting her. He acknowledged that he did not mention that allegation in his police report on the arrest.
Wilson said he only rarely used his body camera during his normal job at the city airport, mistakenly believed he had captured Sahouri’s arrest and was unfamiliar with the details of the department’s body camera policy.
The cameras always record video when turned on and can retrieve video recordings of incidents not recorded after that, if not already deleted. Agents who are not recording the incidents they should be having should notify the supervisors, who can then attempt to recover video without audio.
Prosecutors say Sahouri and Robnett ignored a police order to leave the area broadcast through a public address system about 90 minutes before their arrest.
The defense argues that the order was only intended to clear an intersection where protesters blocked a police car. Akin, the Register reporter who was not arrested, testified that she did not feel she was leaving and continued reporting.
Body cameras played in court showed officers yelling at protesters to leave the intersection and telling them to be peaceful. Robnett and Sahouri obeyed.
A separate order to distribute was vaguely heard on the video in the background – so quietly that even an officer who testified before the prosecution seemed to struggle to understand. But prosecutors argued that the message was louder on the spot.