Reporter cleared of trespassing at a police station
A Milwaukee journalist who was arrested last summer after photographing squad cars at a Milwaukee police station was declared not guilty of trespassing charges in municipal court on Monday.
Edgar Mendez, 40, was working on a story about police response times for the Neighborhood News Service, where he is a staff writer. Mendez was handcuffed, fingerprinted and detained more than two hours at the District 2 station, 245 W. Lincoln Ave., before being released with a ticket for trespassing.
“The ticket was really secondary,” Mendez said Monday. “It was the bad experience, what I went through, that leaves a bad taste.”
He wrote his own story about his case on Monday for Neighborhood News Service.
“Though I emerged with my integrity and shaky trust in our justice system intact, I can’t say that I walked out of court with a smile, or even feeling vindicated,” Mendez wrote. “The truth is that the entire experience was traumatic.”
Municipal Court Judge Derek Mosley did find Mendez had parked in the District 2 parking lot in violation of an ordinance and a sign restricting parking there to Police Department staff. Mendez has three months to pay a $50 fine.
Mendez said he was only in the lot five minutes to take photos and didn’t see the No Trespassing sign, which was posted along the perimeter inside the lot, not at the entrance.
Mendez said he had photographed squad cars in the lot at an east side police station earlier that Sunday, Aug. 5, without a problem, and officers in the parking lot at District 2 did not bring up the No Trespassing sign.
But after Mendez drove away from the lot, he was pulled over, arrested, taken back to the station and ultimately cited for trespassing by another officer.
At the time, Neighborhood News Service editor Sharon McGowan called Mendez’s treatment excessive and reached out to the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for help in the case.
Mendez was represented without charge by Jim Gramling, a former municipal judge.
“We were delighted and grateful he was not only willing but eager to take the case,” McGowan said.
She recalled that as soon as Mendez was pulled over, he called her to say what was happening, but then was out of touch for hours, which she said was extremely concerning.
McGowan said the incident was a first for Neighborhood News Service.
“We’ve been told we couldn’t cover a meeting, that kind of thing, but never someone arrested and interrogated” over their work as a reporter.
She said if he’d just been ticketed for parking in the lot, the service would have paid.
“It was outrageous the way he was treated,” she said.
McGowan said now that the case has concluded, the Neighborhood News Service will consider whether to file a complaint with the Police Department.