IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – An Iowa journalist reporting a racial justice protest was blinded when a police officer sprayed pepper spray on her face and was imprisoned for hours despite repeatedly telling him she was just doing her job, according to the video played Tuesday. during 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 had her arrested, 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 the media and human rights advocates, who say the charges are an attack on freedom of the press and unfounded. The couple faces fines and possibly even jail time if convicted.
Wilson official testified on Tuesday that he did not record the arrest on his body camera and notify a supervisor as required by department policy. But Chiodo captured the scene shortly after Wilson held Sahouri on his body camera. Chiodo said he had not arrested a second Register reporter who was in the area for disobeying orders and “seemed very scared.”
“I was just trying to give her very simple instructions she needed to get up and go,” Chiodo testified.
The newspaper had commissioned Sahouri to cover the protest at the Merle Hay shopping center in Des Moines days after the death of George Floyd, a Minneapolis black man pronounced dead after a white officer dug his knee for nine minutes laid his neck. Hundreds of protesters gathered and Sahouri reported the details live on Twitter.
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 commercial parking lot, 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 returned 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 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. It was immediately clear that Sahouri’s arrest was newsworthy and controversial.
Prosecutors say Sahouri and Robnett ignored police orders to leave the area long before they were arrested, while the defense claims such orders were unclear.
Body cameras played in court showed officers yelling at protesters to leave an intersection and instructing them to be peaceful about 90 minutes before their arrest, and 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 on-site message was louder and broadcast over a public address system.