Cops Join Trump’s War on the Press

ON JUNE 9, PHOTOJOURNALIST MICHAEL NIGRO was shot in the head by Los Angeles police while covering a protest against U.S. immigration cruelty in front of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. Fortunately for him, Nigro was wearing a helmet, which deflected the blow from what he believed to be a “less lethal” crowd-control munition.

“It felt very very intentional,” Nigro told NPR, suggesting the goal was to create “a chilling effect to convince us to go away and not document” the protest taking place. He noted that both sides of his helmet had tags that said “PRESS”—his protective vest was even more prominently labeled—and he was carrying two professional-grade cameras.

What happened to Nigro is not an anomaly. Police in Los Angeles and elsewhere seem to be singling out members of the media for exclusion, arrest, detention, and the use of force. The Los Angeles Press Club and the investigative reporting site Status Coup filed a lawsuit on June 16 in the Central District of California alleging that officers at recent demonstrations have been targeting journalists who are just trying to do their jobs. In court, they presented thirty-five examples of police either barring reporters from public areas or using force on them such as Nigro experienced.

“Being a journalist in Los Angeles is now a dangerous profession,” states the lawsuit, which named the city of Los Angeles and its chief of police as defendants. “LAPD unlawfully used force and the threat of force against Plaintiffs, their members and other journalists to intimidate them and interfere with their constitutional right to document public events as the press.”

The complaint notes that the Los Angeles Police Department “has a long history . . . of using excessive force against journalists at protests,” citing violent police actions against the press during the Democratic National Convention in 2000. Similar accusations were made against the LAPD at various points over the following two decades, including during the 2020 protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In response to those latter reports, the California legislature enacted new laws in 2021 and 2022 to protect the rights of journalists covering protests in that state. The lawsuit called the department’s conduct during last month’s protests “a brazen refusal to abide by the Constitution and state law.”

What makes the matter more remarkable is that, on July 10, a federal district court agreed, essentially. Judge Hernán Vera of the Central District of California ordered the LAPD to stop obstructing, detaining, assaulting, and using “nonlethal” ammunition against journalists covering protests, as well as to stop limiting journalists’ movements unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary to do so. He imposed a two-week restraining order against the department, which may be extended after a preliminary injunction hearing set for July 24.

“Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on their First Amendment claims and they are likely to suffer irreparable harm covering continuing protests in Los Angeles,” Vera wrote in his ruling. “Indeed, given the fundamental nature of the speech interests involved and the almost daily protests throughout Southern California drawing media coverage, the identified harm is undoubtedly imminent and concrete.”

JUDGE VERA’S RULING IDENTIFIED a number of other alleged recent examples of heavy-handedness on the part of Los Angeles police against members of the press for which supporting documentation was provided. Besides Nigro, these include the following:

• “On June 8, LAPD officers held a group of approximately 20 to 30 journalists from MSNBC, CNN, the AP, and other outlets in a ‘press area’ approximately 150 feet from protests under threat of arrest.”

• “On June 9, the LAPD detained CNN reporter Jason Carroll and his crew while they were live on air, warning that he would be arrested if he returned to the area.”

• “On June 19, LAPD officers arrested journalist Anthony Orendorff while he was covering an ICE raid.” Despite identifying himself as a journalist, he was held for four days.

• “On June 8, Lauren Tomasi of 9News Australia was speaking into a professional TV camera, dozens of feet from the line of officers behind her. . . . No protestors are visible near her. . . . Despite this, an LAPD officer appears to aim at Tomasi, hitting her leg with a rubber bullet.”

• “On June 14, photojournalist Héctor Adolfo Quintanar Perez was covering the aftermath of the No Kings protest, wearing a large press badge and carrying two professional cameras. . . . While he was taking photos of the skirmish line, an LAPD officer—standing close enough to see his press badge—shot him with an LLM in the knee. . . . To this day, Perez lives with pain and walks with a cane.”

• “On June 14, LAPD officers fired rubber bullets into the crowd, hitting photographer Marshall Woodruff, slicing open his right eye, and leaving him with potentially permanent vision loss.”

• “On the same day, an LAPD mounted officer charged 82-year-old photographer David Healy with his horse, knocking Healy to the ground and breaking one of his ribs.”

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MANY MORE SUCH INCIDENTS have been documented elsewhere. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, lists more than 50 assaults on the press that took place in June. Most happened in Los Angeles, where President Donald Trump sent hundreds of active-duty Marines and thousands of National Guard soldiers—many of whom hated and objected to their deployment—over the objections of the city’s mayor and state’s governor. Militarism may not necessarily cause police brutality and the targeting of journalists, but it surely does nothing to prevent it.

What’s happening, evidently, is that a troubling number of law enforcement offices view press coverage of public protests as a threat, rather than a protected legal and constitutional right. Emboldened by Trump’s nonstop slander of the Fourth Estate, they feel justified in treating the press as enemies of the people. And again, all that stands in the way of their succeeding is the power of the courts, should anyone still be paying attention to that branch of government.

Encouragingly, as of this writing, no additional physical attacks on the press by Los Angeles police have been reported since the LA Press Club and Status Coup filed their lawsuit, according to the Press Freedom Tracker. But there have been a few reported elsewhere, including an incident on July 4 in Portland, Oregon, where police allegedly fired crowd-control projectiles at independent journalist Mason Lake, with one projectile striking the region between his lower abdomen and groin. “It’s very disconcerting to see how free press has been trampled,” Lake said. “The best we can do is push back and make sure the truth isn’t run over.”

​​That won’t be easy. Last Thursday in Cincinnati, two journalists were among the dozen-plus people arrested during a protest over the immigration detention of a former hospital chaplain. Reporter Madeline Fening and photo intern Lucas Griffith were charged with, among other things, felony rioting. National journalist advocacy groups are reacting with alarm, with Caroline Hendrie, the executive director of the Society of Professional Journalists, saying in a statement, “We are deeply concerned that their First Amendment rights are being violated as we speak and that in effect, they were arrested for doing their jobs.” A judge set bond at $2,500 for each person arrested and set a hearing for this Wednesday, July 23.

What’s certain is that the protests will continue, and so will the attacks by police on the journalists whose job it is to cover them. That’s because a lawless president is an open invitation to law-breaking police.

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