Reporter ‘doing job ’ at protest when arrested

IOWA CITY, Iowa — An Iowa journalist covering a protest for racial justice was temporarily blinded after a police officer shot pepper spray at her and then jailed despite telling him repeatedly that she was just doing her job, according to video played Tuesday at 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 was arresting her, adding that she was in pain and couldn’t see.

“This is my job,” Sahouri says on the video. “I’m just doing my job.

I’m a journalist.”

Sahouri’s defense played the video for jurors on the second day of a trial in which Sahouri and her former boyfriend, Spenser Robnett, are charged with failure to disperse and interference with official acts. The prosecution has drawn widespread criticism from media and human rights advocates, who say that the charges are an attack on press freedom. The two face fines and potentially jail time if convicted.

Officer Wilson testified that he failed to record the arrest on his body camera and did not notify a supervisor as required by department policy. But Chiodo’s body camera captured the scene shortly after Wilson detained Sahouri.

Chiodo said he did not arrest a second Register reporter with Sahouri, Katie Akin, because she wasn’t disobeying orders and “seemed very scared,” telling her to leave instead.

Akin testified that she was surprised to see an officer pepper spray and arrest Sahouri because “I didn’t understand us to be breaking any laws or doing anything wrong.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation called the video powerful evidence that Sahouri “was arrested while doing her job reporting on historic protests.”

“This arrest should never have been made and the prosecutor should never have brought these charges,” the group said in a tweet.

Wilson, an 18-year veteran of the Des Moines Police Department, said he responded to the protest and found a “riotous mob” that was breaking store windows, throwing rocks and water bottles at officers, and running in different directions. He said his unit was told to clear a parking lot, and he used a device known as a fogger to blanket the area with pepper spray.