> Journalists covering a protest in a Minneapolis suburb Friday night were forced on their stomachs by law enforcement, rounded up and were only released after having their face and press credentials photographed.
> The incident occurred hours after a judge issued a temporary order barring the Minnesota State Patrol from using physical force or chemical agents against journalists, according to court documents.
Sounds like the police don't care about the judge's order, nor the rights of journalists.
Exactly, we have shown these people that no matter what they do we won’t hold them accountable. That needs to change otherwise we’re headed somewhere I don’t want to go.
...hence these very protests. And thus the outsized extra-legal response.
This is a gang war, fundamentally. Cops view the protest movement as an existential threat (and strictly, they're not wrong) and are going to use whatever tools they can find to fight it. They aren't trying to enforce the law, they're trying to put down their enemies.
Don't the police already use kid gloves to handle most of the situations? I've been watching livestreams of these for a solid year now and that seems to be a common theme: the police are in general far nicer and accommodating than they could be or even should be.
The dramatic brush you're painting this with is extremely unrealistic.
> [...] temporary order barring the Minnesota State Patrol from using physical force or chemical agents against journalists
I'm sorry, I'm not from USA, can somebody explain why it has _just_ been _temporarily_ banned to use "force or chemical agents" against journalists? I was under the impression that using such things against journalists was banned a long time ago in most of the developed countries, what with the freedom of the press and so on... Is Minesotta an exception here? Or USA?
The order here[1], which the OP did not cite/link to, is a temporary order to provide relief while a court case is decided.
My understanding of the argument is that the journalists claim that physical force is being used to prevent them from reporting on protests, and that their presence is lawful. The police claim that they are issuing disperse orders to people on the street. The cause of the disperse order is not clear to me: it seems like it could be that there is a curfew presently establish — however, the curfew exempts the press, and so would not apply to them. It could be that they believe the crowd unruly & are trying to maintain safety, however, that action needs to (IMO) be enforced against the individuals that are the cause of the unsafety/riot if there is one, which press acting solely as press cannot by definition be. As the order states,
> Accordingly, in order for the State Defendants' general dispersal orders limiting the press's access to be constitutional, the State Defendants must demonstrate that general dispersal orders are "essential to preserve higher values and [are] narrowly tailored to serve that interest." The State Defendants fail to do so here.³
> ³Indeed, although the State Defendants argue that their general dispersal orders were "necessary for obvious safety reasons," they make no attempt to demonstrate that the general dispersal orders were narrowly tailored to address those safety concerns.
There have been many cases of rioters claiming press credentials in attempts to bypass responsibility for criminal activity. "I'm not with mob of rioters attempting to burn down that courthouse, I'm a journalist. See, look on my helmet - P R E S S."
I think that was common in Portland over the last year.
> While law enforcement leaders say they had hoped to continue facilitating the more peaceful elements of the demonstrations with a more distanced approach, there were pockets of aggressive behavior that posed a threat to officers, as well as attempts to breach the station's outer ring of fencing, which spurred action from law enforcement to clear the immediate area.
The protests became unlawful and rightfully so.
> A lot of journalists like myself were slow to leave the area,” Colt said. “We didn’t think we needed to, and we wanted to cover what was happening.”
> Colt described police then corralling protesters and media into one group and yelling for them to get “flat on our stomachs.”
Sounds like if you had the full context it wouldn’t be so outrageous.
How do we know people are press and not pretending to be to sneak behind police lines and set fire to the police station or things like that.
"Sounds like you enjoy the taste of boot" is trivially against the site guidelines regardless of what view the commenter holds or how right they are or feel they are or you feel they are. Anyone can see that, no matter how passionately they hold their opinions.
HN has had tons of comments about police brutality including tons from what I assume is a similar view to your own. For a while it was by far the most-discussed topic on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962.
The vast majority of people never have negative interactions with police and actually are thankful for them keeping their communities safe.
The ones that do have problems are those that resist arrest and detainment in a society where everyone is armed.
Hence, I wouldn’t know the taste.
I acknowledge the historical precedent but it’s been a long time since such things and I prefer to look at the facts of the situation at hand (as would be done in a court of law) rather than implying conspiratorial motives from history.
I know that bit, but other commenters have implied that this is a direct signal that the police don't care about what the judge says.
I'm just wondering whether that is the case and it's a conscious decision made by the officers on the ground, or if they just don't know an order has been issued.
Oh they knew alright. Someone in leadership came up with this plan as a way to follow the letter of the order but not the spirit. Technically, they didn't use physical force against the journalists, at least as police see it.
If anyone in leadership gets called before the judge to answer for this, I'm sure they will argue that they needed a way to identify the journalists so they can keep them "safe". The intimidation is just a fortunate byproduct.
This would be an excellent opportunity for Joe Biden to show what kind of president he is, clearly the behavior of the police is unacceptable but what to do if the police doesn't care.
But frankly I don't think he will do much. About the only two things I can recall being reported from Biden are tripping when entering a plane and him calling the lifting of the restrictions in Texas a huge mistake.
You stop relying on blanket dispersal orders, curfews, other things like that. Arrest people for shooting, looting, throwing bricks, setting fires, you know, crimes that matter.
The journalists would see this as an impediment to them getting the "true story" (for whatever value of "X" that is) as it prevents them from "embedding" with the masses along with identifying the journo for violent actions. Not every "reporter" has a full camera crew.
That being said, there were examples of the vest you describe at the DC "insurrection", or at least I saw some some journos wearing neon-yellow reflective vests stenciled with "REPORTER" on the live feed.
Personally, I agree with you totally. Police & journalists should be clearly identified to better control things as it seems the default these days is to riot.
> The incident occurred hours after a judge issued a temporary order barring the Minnesota State Patrol from using physical force or chemical agents against journalists, according to court documents.
Sounds like the police don't care about the judge's order, nor the rights of journalists.