Yahoo Movies Black reporter arrested during Daunte Wright protest: ‘They want to silence the media because we’re shining light in dark places’
A journalist covering the Daunte Wright protests has told how he was arrested by police after going to the aid of a lost motorist caught up in the traffic gridlock.
Harry Colbert, Editor-in-Chief of North News, was live-streaming on Facebook as he was arrested and handcuffed, while trying to help the driver who was lost and asking for directions.
The video shows police officers banging on the motorist’s car with their fists and sticks and telling him to “Get out of here now”. It also shows Mr Colbert asking the officers to help the driver.
Mr Colbert is Black and the motorist was a person of colour.
“Helping him does not mean hitting his car,” Mr Colbert can be heard to say during the incident, which happened on Wednesday 14 April.
The video footage also shows Mr Colbert, 50, repeatedly identifying himself as a member of the media, and pointing out he had the right to be there, and that a curfew imposed by authorities did not apply to the press.
It also shows Mr Colbert asking where he can lawfully stand as a member of the press, before being told he is to be arrested. The video also contains that moment, with a police officer accusing Mr Colbert of wanting to be a “tough guy”.
Mr Colbert, whose media organisation is a community newspaper in based North Minneapolis, told The Independent he typically took photographs while covering stories, but decided to livestream the video in order to get a better sense of the atmosphere, as hundreds of protests demonstrated for a fourth night over the killing by police of 20-year-old Daunte Wright.
“As I’m walking, I noticed, and I commented, that some civilian vehicles seemed to be caught up in the onslaught, and probably didn’t know what was going on,” he said.
“Almost as soon as I commented on that, there’s an older gentleman, where English is not his first language, and he’s calling out, asking for help saying, ‘Hey, how can I get out of this? How do I get around’.”
It was at that point, the police started shouting at the driver and Mr Colbert.
Mr Colbert said he then had his hands tied with zips ties and was passed from officer to officer, all the while telling them he was a reporter.
He said it was only some time later, when he was questioned by an African American officer, that a senior officer was called over, informed Mr Colbert was a working journalist, that the ties were cut and he was allowed to leave.
Mr Colbert, shaken by his experience, said he “absolutely” believed the fact he was Black played a role in his arrest.
He wrote on his Facebook page, that as he was being detained, the arresting officer “wanted to have a few last words with me, telling me how I was trying to be a tough guy”.
He said he was trying to help the older man, that an officer said “anyone with a brain knows if you see a bunch of flashing lights you go the other way”.
He wrote: “The more I think about how strange his statement was, I can’t help but to use his own words ... anyone with a brain knows the difference between a taser and a gun. Yet here we are.”
He added: “Anyone with a brain knows if you kneel on a man’s chest and neck for more than 9 minutes you will kill him. Yet here we are.
Anyone with a brain knows you don’t arrest a working journalist on trumped-up charges. Yet here we are.”
Mr Colbert said he felt obliged to step in as he feared for the motorist’s well-being had he not so, especially having seen how 20-year-old Daunte Wright was fatally shot just a few days earlier, a few miles away, by police during a traffic stop.
The police have been widely condemned for their treatment of both journalists and protesters amid the protesters - “kettling” reporters and forcing them to show their badges, and firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
One photographer was maced by police. Others were hit by non-lethal rounds.
A CNN reporter, Sara Sidner, went viral after tweeting that she and her crew were ignoring a threat of arrest to stay and cover events.
“In my 25 years as a reporter I have NEVER heard police in America actually say ‘journalists will be arrested’ during a protest,” she wrote.
“But that happened in #BrooklynCenter last night.”
Last summer, The Independent launched an initiative to push for press freedom, Journalism is Not a Crime, after one of its reporters was arrested while covering racial justice protests in Seattle.
Mr Colbert said he was arrested by officers from the Minnesota State Patrol, who accused him of unlawful assembly and violating curfew. Nobody from the police agency responded to enquiries on Monday.
Mr Colbert said: “I think they want to silence media, because we are shining light in dark places. And the more that they can harass and discourage us from the out there, it also shows the average citizen ‘If they can do this to them, just think of what they could do to us’.”
