Black photojournalist sues Sausalito, three police officers
A photojournalist who was injured and had his equipment seized by police during a disturbance at a homeless encampment in Sausalito has sued the city and its officers for $21 million, saying the officers were racially motivated and violated state laws protecting freedom of the press.
Despite California’s “shield law” protecting journalists and other protective measures, “in too many instances, the police have swept up newsgatherers and photojournalists as part of arrests, typically made without probable cause, for purposes of quelling legitimate protest activity, along with the press’ coverage of it,” Jeremy Portje’s lawyers said in a suit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
They said Portje is still suffering physically, psychologically and financially from his encounter with Sausalito police on Nov. 30.
Portje, a Bay Area staff photographer and freelancer for 25 years, said he went to the Sausalito harbor that day at the request of a boat owner whose vessel was about to be destroyed by city officials and was turned away by officers. He said he then heard shouting from nearby Marinship Park, the site of a homeless encampment, and saw police activity that he started to film. He said a group of officers huddled together and then approached him.
One officer stood in front of his camera to block his photos, then lunged at him and accidentally hit his own face on the camera, Portje said. He said the officer then punched him, put him in a painful shoulder hold and then, along with other officers, handcuffed and arrested him. All the officers were white, said Portje, who is Black.
Police accused Portje of striking the officer with his camera, and he was charged with two misdemeanor counts of battery and a felony of obstructing police. He was jailed for 11 hours, then released to his wife’s custody on $15,000 bail. Four weeks later, Marin County District Attorney Lori Frugoli dropped the charges, saying she lacked evidence that Portje had intended to injure the officer.
Meanwhile, however, Superior Court Judge Mark Talamantes had issued a warrant Dec. 9 allowing police to search Portje’s camera, cell phone and photo memory cards, despite the state’s shield law, which in most cases prohibits officers from searching journalists’ equipment and unpublished material. Officers had told the judge that Portje was “actively anti-police,” and one said he “was not a true objective journalist.”
Frugoli ordered the officers on Dec. 21 not to examine the equipment, which was later returned to Portje. But an investigator in the district attorney’s office said in a memo, also on Dec. 21, that he had downloaded data from Portje’s cell phone, photographed his camera and memory cards, and forwarded the material to a crime task force. Portje said in his lawsuit that one of the officers also reported that his property had been searched.
Sausalito’s police chief, John Rohrbacher, and his officers “violated their own policies on press access to police activity,” Portje’s lawyers said in their court filing.
“Mr. Portje, an articulate and professional African American journalist, was simply too much for (the officers) to bear,” the lawyers said. Their actions were “designed to silence his spirit and journalistic advocacy for the disempowered in the city of Sausalito.”
Portje is still in severe pain and has received death threats from supporters of police, the lawsuit said. It seeks $12 million in damages from the city and $3 million from each of three officers, Sean Smagalski, Thomas Georges and Nick White. It also seeks court orders to prohibit such seizures of journalists’ equipment and require Sausalito to adopt court-supervised policies to protect press freedom.
City Manager Chris Zapata did not immediately respond to request for comment on the suit. But earlier this week, ABC7 News quoted Zapata as saying that “there has been a review of credible evidence in this matter and we have found no information to support any indication that this incident was about race as alleged.”