Journalists attacked by troopers to settle lawsuit

LOS ANGELES — Two journalists who were cornered and attacked by the Minnesota State Patrol as they covered protests over George Floyd’s murder for the Los Angeles Times will settle a lawsuit with the state for $1.2 million. The pair, one current and one former L.A. Times employee, alleged the troopers violated their First Amendment rights.

The settlement stems from a violent May 30, 2020, confrontation, when staff photographer Carolyn Cole and Molly Hennessy-fiske, then the Times’ Houston bureau chief, were in Minneapolis covering the community’s response to Floyd’s murder by former police officer Derek Chauvin.

Minnesota’s governor had issued an executive order for a nighttime curfew in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but the directive exempted law enforcement, emergency personnel and news media.

On May 30, after the curfew went into effect, the two reporters were covering a protest when, they said, state troopers ordered crowds to disperse.

Though they were wearing credentials, carrying media equipment and identified themselves as press, the journalists said, the troopers then backed them and other media personnel into a corner against a wall and began firing projectiles and pepper-spraying the group.

“Being attacked by the Minneapolis State Patrol four years ago was an experience no other journalist should have to face,” Cole said in a statement.

The photojournalist was pepper-sprayed and suffered a corneal abrasion in her eye.

Hennessy-fiske was bloodied after being hit multiple times by blunt projectiles.

“I hope this ruling, upholding our First Amendment rights, will help to protect other photographers and reporters trying to do their jobs,” Cole wrote.