Arrested journalist pleaded with officer: ‘This is my job’
An Iowa journalist recounted getting peppersprayed and arrested while covering a protest for racial justice last year, testifying in her own defense Tuesday at her trial on charges stemming from the incident.
Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri told jurors she was running away from a scene where riot police had shot tear gas and were advancing to disperse protesters outside a mall in Des Moines, Iowa. She said that after she rounded the corner of a Verizon store, she saw an officer charging at her and put her hands up.
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Sahouri said. “I said, ‘I’m press, I’m press, I’m press.’ He grabbed me, peppersprayed me and as he was doing so said, ‘That’s not what I asked’.”
Sahouri said the pepper spray was “extremely painful” and made her think she was going to go blind.
Sahouri’s testimony came 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 case has drawn widespread criticism from media and human-rights advocates, who call the charges an attack on press freedom. The pair face fines and potentially jail time if convicted of the misdemeanors.
A six-member jury is expected to begin deliberations Wednesday morning.
Body-camera video played for jurors before Sahouri’s testimony backed up her account, showing that she was temporarily blinded and hurting from pepper spray and repeatedly told police she was a reporter.
“This is my job,” Sahouri tells an officer. “I’m just doing my job. I’m a journalist.”
Robnett, who accompanied Sahouri to the protest for safety reasons, also took the stand Tuesday. He said he saw Officer Luke Wilson spray Sahouri from close range, and that he stepped forward to say that Sahouri was a Register reporter. The officer then shot pepper spray at him, knocking him to the ground, before he was handcuffed and jailed, Robnett said.
Robnett and Sahouri testified that they did not hear any earlier police orders to leave the scene, and that they did not interfere with the officers who arrested them.
Wilson said he responded to the protest and found a “riotous mob” breaking store windows and throwing rocks and water bottles at officers. 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 clouds of pepper spray.
He said he decided Sahouri needed to be arrested when she did not leave and that he was unaware she was a journalist when he grabbed her. He said Robnett tried to pull Sahouri out of his grasp, and he deployed more pepper spray that “incapacitated” Robnett.