Three Journalists Arrested At Occupy Atlanta (Updated with new video)

UPDATE: I got home a little while ago and found the above video in my inbox that shows Creative Loafing photographer Stephanie Parr getting arrested for taking photos of cops.

Atlanta police arrested three journalists covering an Occupy Atlanta protest Saturday night, including one I met just over two weeks ago.

Alisen Redmond, editor of The Sentinel at Kennesaw State University, and Judith Kim of The Signal at Georgia State University, spent 14 hours in jail on a charge of obstructing traffic.

Stephanie Parr, a photographer intern from Creative Loafing, was also arrested.

The street they were standing off had been closed off by police, making it impossible for them to have obstructed traffic.

The students already have legal representation and this should be a breeze to beat in court.

Hopefully, they find legal representation to file a lawsuit against the Atlanta Police Department.

According to a press release from the Student Press Law Center.

The journalists were on assignment for their newspapers, taking photos and shooting video of police arresting protesters. Each identified herself to police as a working journalist. Both students were released from jail on the afternoon of Nov. 6 and given a March 9, 2012, date to appear in court.

A police spokesman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the arrests were done in the name of “public safety.”

"The department was not targeting journalists or any other particular group," Campos said. "All violators were arrested. Our focus was to clear the streets in the interest of public safety, both for pedestrians and motorists alike."

Creative Loafing editor-in-chief Eric Celeste said the weekly was troubled by the arrest of photographer Stephanie Parr but "was not going to make a big deal of it."

"She was just trying to do her job and ... got caught in the middle of it," Celeste told the AJC. "It does look like police overreacted a little bit."

"We do think it was indicative of a larger problem with the way the city has been handling [Occupy Atlanta]," Celeste said.

Police also arrested a man for assaulting an officer, a felony, after they accused him of knocking a cop off his motorcycle.

But a video posted on Cop Watch shows the officer rammed him on his motorcycle after the man stood in front of him.

I met Redmond last month when I spoke on a panel with Mickey Osterreicher at the Media Law in the Digital Age conference.

She sat in the front and asked several questions, jotting down notes. Here is the article she wrote.

Then later that night, we met up at the Occupy Atlanta encampment where police had threatened to shut it down that night.

A couple of other journalists who had attended the conference were also there waiting for police to arrive.

But Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed put the plans on hold after meeting with some of the protesters.

He ended up shutting them down later that week. But apparently they set it back up again.

Below is a photo I took with my iPhone the day before the conference.

UPDATE II: Some Occupy Atlanta activists have set up camp in front of a home of a police officer who is about to get foreclosed on.

occupy_atlanta.jpg

Comments

How, precisely, does arresting journalists as they collect news in order to report it, then releasing them the next day with no charges filed, NOT constitute a prior-restraint of the press?

If no reporter can ever gather information, no reporter can ever report news, only hearsay and rumor. Do we honestly need a law that mandates embedded journalists in POLICE forces to keep the police from arresting every reporter they see?

Carlos, for some reason, when I try to post a link to this article on Facebook, instead of posting the title of the article, it says, "Access denied | Pixiq".

Carlos Miller - Photography is Not a Crime
Pixiq Expert

It stems from a glitch with daylight savings time. When I first published the story, the glitch caused it to go into scheduled posting mode, meaning it was going to post in two hours instead of immediately.

But I don't notice this unless I log out of my account. I see the story online but nobody else can.

So I tried to post the story on FB, only to get the access denied. That was when I had to go back and fix the glitch by changing the time posted.

But FB has its own glitch that once you attempt to post an article on there, it keeps a memory of how that story looked when initially posted, rather than post the updated version.

I bet if the police had not taken the action they had (the formation marching down the middle of the street, which was reported closed) and had taken a monitor/observe approach for any real problems, things would have turned out much different.

I don't know if the reporter had refused orders to move off the street, or if she was just snatched off the street as the video shows, but in any case, Riot 101 says you go for those causing the problems! I saw no problems she was causing.

Seems the police were trying to make a statement. Don't really know why if the street was closed. I hope the Mayor has the pen in hand to add all those zeros on the check....its just a matter of time now.

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