For much of the past two weeks, I’ve found myself spending more hours than I can count responding to the arrest of a reporter I work with who was documenting the dismantling of a Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of New Mexico.
This is a new experience for me. Given how often journalists are arrested, I’ve gotten lucky.
Despite being a working journalist for nearly 35 years around the country who has been threatened with arrest multiple times and managed reporters who found themselves similarly targeted, neither I nor any of my colleagues have ever spent time in lock up.
That changed on May 15, when police arrested my colleague Bryant Furlow as he was observing the clearing of the encampment on the UNM campus.
I spent part of that day driving around Albuquerque trying to figure out where police had Bryant and Tara Armijo-Prewitt, a photographer documenting the action to whom he is married. They were released after 12 hours in custody.
Bryant’s arrest concerns me and causes me pause: Are New Mexico journalists at risk of being targeted as they have been across the country?
Upon arriving on the scene, Bryant asked officers where news media were permitted to stand and did not receive an answer. He repeatedly asked officers if there was a public information officer on scene with whom he could speak and was told there was not. As officers were handcuffing him, he loudly and repeatedly shouted he was with the press.
How could simply documenting a police action get you arrested? It’s not as rare as you might think.
In late August 2004, I remember standing at a street corner in Manhattan and documenting hundreds of protestors and New York police officers clashing during the Republican National Convention. A few protesters threw projectiles at officers, passions ran high. While none of my colleagues were scooped up by police as they rounded up protestors, my personal experience doesn’t capture the whole story. A number of journalists were locked up during the days-long running battle between protestors and police, proof of which came in 2014 with the $18 million settlement NYC agreed with the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. (Yes, my colleagues and I dodged the worst, but one photojournalist friend did suffer the indignity of chicken poop meant for police officers hitting his head, which prompted more laughter than anger later that night when he regaled us with the tale of the errant throw. That same summer, I covered the Democratic National Convention in Boston, which I recall as not nearly as eventful).
Over the years I’ve encountered the occasional police officer or sheriff’s deputy who threatened me with lock up because they didn’t like how many questions I was asking or a story I had done; on one occasion it was a county sheriff who sought to intimidate me after the publication of a newspaper story that reflected poorly on his agency.
I write all this because it is important for the public to recognize the sometimes-adversarial relationship between journalists and law enforcement. It comes with doing the job we do as journalists; it always has been that way.
A review of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker maintained by the Freedom of the Press Foundation last week reveals that nearly 20 journalists have been arrested around the country in the past three months, mostly during protests in New York, Tucson, Nashville, Austin, Portland, Ore. Some were student reporters; others were full-time employees of media outlets. Still others were independent journalists, meaning they weren’t affiliated with any outlet but were on the scene to document the protests for their own readers, listeners, or viewers — or perhaps to sell a story to a news outlet wanting a first-hand account.
In addition to the arrests, several journalists were detained and later released without being charged.
Because Bryant Furlow is an independent journalist who frequently contributes to New Mexico In Depth, our organization published his statement the day after he was released
Over the years Bryant’s work with us has led to consequential, high-profile impact, prompting federal and state investigations into a local school district and one of the state’s largest hospitals. He’s also reported on the state’s severely short-staffed nursing homes and the unregulated nature of New Mexico’s assisted living facilities.
Twice, he has worked with New Mexico In Depth and New York-based, Pulitzer-winning ProPublica on year-long projects. And we’re embarking on a third effort with Bryant this year thanks to the Data-Driven Reporting Project.
Bryant is one of the finest investigative journalists we have in New Mexico, and it is a shame that he was arrested for doing what journalists do: documenting life.
Trip Jennings started his career in Georgia at his hometown newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle, before working at newspapers in California, Florida and Connecticut. Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican. He holds a Master’s of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga.