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CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

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Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#241

Post by corrupt_measure »

elil17 wrote: post #175
kfrzcode wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: I'm wrong, the video I had seen was slightly abridged. The video camera turns on while they were (likely) already told they will be arrested. They were perhaps ordered to move and did not move. The National Guard and state troopers in that particular area ( Downvoters: please add comment why, or else this isn't discourse

Actually they had been filming continuously, and they had been previously told by police to stand where they were standing, and they had received no new instructions from the police since then, and there was an all-white group of reporters standing in a similar position on the other side of the police who did not get arrested. I understand the desire to come up with an explanation for what happened, I really do, but…

While it may be tempting to jump to a racial interpretation of the arrest, it appears that the CNN reporters were just standing in the wrong place and in the chaos of the moment were arrested.

Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#242

Post by tinyhouse »

Miner49er wrote: post #223
tinyhouse wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ignoring the question. You said you cannot be not racist if you're part of the police system. Yet you don't offer any alternatives.

It would require massive fundamental change to society, but one idea is eventually citizens could "police" themselves. The majority of people could go through training and work together to provide security and protection in their own communities when need be.

Well, that's what I thought you're suggesting...

I know some places around the world that operate like that. I suggest you go and live there before suggesting something crazy like that. Good luck.

Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#243

Post by banads »

UncleMeat wrote: post #233
banads wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The police system as a whole is racist. Anybody who chooses to participate in and support that system everyday of their lives is racist. What about all the Democrats and Republicans who are ultimately responsible for the laws governing the police system and who have for years tacitly or explicitly supported the war on drugs?

Of course. Anti-racist activists have long been extremely critical of the lawmakers. The dems tend to be better than the republicans, but both participate in and contribute to a system that ultimately is racist at its very core.

It seems like most people (especially mainstream news such as CNN) focus the majority of their criticism on the police, while ignoring the politicians of both parties that are the root cause.

Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#244

Post by bargl »

abeppu wrote: post #221
bargl wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police can break the law too. An officer's actions may or may not be legal and that's determined after the fact in a court of law. This doesn't happen all the time, but when police do break the law, or don't follow it correctly their actions come under scrutiny, data collected can be discarded from court, and even suffer personal blowback. What you're asking is how did it happen? That's because it's illegal for a cit…

My understanding was in many states, the guideline for holding someone without a charge was generally 72 hours (where weekends and holidays can extend that period; prosecutors' right to not work weekends is more important than any of your rights ...), with a range of exceptions open for abuse (e.g. hold you for 48 hours, decide you're acting strangely and need a psychiatric hold, etc).

You are probably right. I don't think they have to charge you, but they do have to have cause. If there is video that they detained you without cause. I may have gotten my terms mixed up. In my understanding. Cause, is suspicion of a crime (disorderly conduct and resisting arrest are most commonly abused). Charge is the documentation of an accusation from the police of you breaking a law. The police also have to (are supposed to) document this interaction even if they don't charge you with a crime.

Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#245

Post by cryptica »

kevstev wrote: post #222
cryptica wrote: post #213

CNN staged it obviously. There was a riot, the police came in as they should have. CNN team intentionally disregarded orders to vacate the area to cause a stir. Then they were arrested as they knew they would be. CNN team basically setup and staged their own arrests on camera with the intent of deceiving the American people into thinking they were hapless victims. This is exactly why people vote for Trump. This behav…

Do you have any proof to support your "obvious" claim? They were arrested live on air- early in the morning- I saw the 2 minutes or so leading up to their arrest, but not anything before.

Do you actually believe that the police force would send 50 heavily armed and shielded police officers to an area for the sole purpose of arresting 5 CNN reporters?

Clearly, they were not actually sent to arrest 5 CNN reporters. The CNN reporters were arrested for interfering with the work of police officers on the site of a violent riot. If there was fire and broken stuff all around and a small army of police officers arrived at the scene and told me to leave, I would leave the area immediately and I wouldn't feel that this is impeding my freedom in any way. Given the extreme situation, CNN people had no right to interfere with the work of police officers. What if there was a bomb in the area which had to be diffused urgently?

Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#246

Post by throwaway894345 »

aljg wrote: post #211
throwaway894345 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not enough liability, perhaps, but there's certainly some. Here[0] is a list of police department settlements and another[1] of individual police officers being tried and/or convicted for recent high-profile killings. Note that media coverage is inherently sensational and therefore not reflective of reality--just because the media gives much more attention to killings than to the legal repercussions doesn't m…

Good point, I retract my blanket statement of "no legal liability." I should have said that they are not criminally liable. Your link [1] shows how rarely police officers are found criminally liable for murder even in the most egregious of circumstances (only the most egregious ones are prosecuted at all and even most of those result in acquittals). On the other hand you are right that link [0] shows that it is much…

I agree. There needs to be more accountability for police.

> Not personally, of course, the payments will come out of liability insurance (and, therefore, taxpayer coffers).

I think this might actually be eminently desirable that the taxpayer is on the hook. We shoulder a lot of responsibility for our police (not the actions of any given officer, but the system that either fails to weed out 'bad apple' officers or fails to adequately train them or whatever other systemic failure is responsible) and it's right that we shoulder the cost for our lack of will to enact police reform or take it seriously. Of course, I don't think the liability--criminal or civil--is adequate in magnitude, and I would like to see more of both.

Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#247

Post by lurquer »

monocasa wrote: post #240
lurquer wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether they are charged with a crime is up to the governor, ultimately. But, the state police -- if they order a street closed -- are well within their rights to CLEAR the street. If the person won't budge, they can forcibly remove them. Which they did. That is being 'arrested.' There are no exceptions for reporters.

The reporter was complying; he was asking which direction they should go when he was arrested.

How much time should the police give him to decide whether to walk 10 feet to the left, or 10 feet to the right?

Three minutes?

Five minutes?

An hour?

The cameraman was literally STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET while stating that they were there to report on the CLOSURE OF THE STREET.

Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#248

Post by monocasa »

bargl wrote: post #208
monocasa wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone else said, this will probably cost the police and city in a settlement. It probably won't cost the police anything, it'll come out of the taxpayer.

Cities can cut jobs, fire police, put police on notice etc. You might not feel like that is enough, but you better believe that any officer who costs the police money is going to be punished. Maybe not equally to someone else but that's not what I was saying.

> Cities can cut jobs, fire police

They can, but they don't because it would be political suicide.

Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#249

Post by kaitai »

specialist wrote: post #206
myrion wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it happened live on air, they were clearly identified as CNN and willing to comply with police orders - making the police's claim laughable. I wonder what those officers were thinking, arresting a reporter on live camera.

My first hunch is the arresting officers were scrubs, brought in from other jurisdictions to staff up in response to the riots. In the after math of the 1999 WTO riots, many of the worst abuses were committed by LEOs brought in from the outlying areas. Scrubs who didn't have the same training as the locals (and state patrol). Nor have any kind of personal regard for the city and its people. Even so, at the time, I wa…

You are more or less correct. The arresting officers were State Patrol; they're from all over but they're not from the community.

I have protested in St. Paul and Minneapolis many times and in general SPPD have been decent at protests, and MPD has made an effort at protests. There has been a real effort to improve community relations but there are some notable bad apples (as long as Bob Kroll is speaking for MPD employees, we are going to have trouble -- listen to any interview with him to see why.) They have experience with the Super Bowl, many Black Lives Matters protests (Philando Castile was killed in 2016), and the RNC a while ago in St Paul. I was at the RNC protests and the interaction with the police was like a dance -- a relatively polite interaction with horses and concussion grenades, in which I honestly was not that worried about bodily harm -- until the Hennepin County law enforcement came in. Whenever you bring in suburban law enforcement to the city, things get dicey.

Everyday policing has been quite different than behavior at protests. And things are different now.

Re: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

#250

Post by monocasa »

mc32 wrote: post #218
monocasa wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone else said, this will probably cost the police and city in a settlement. It probably won't cost the police anything, it'll come out of the taxpayer.

Not dissimilar to someone accused of harassment at work. It’s most typical the company pays and not the offender. People go after the money.

You don't get protected from criminal actions because you committed them at work though.
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