WaPo’s Wesley Lowery Charged with Trespassing, Interfering with Police in Ferguson
A year ago this month, Ferguson was on edge after the death of Michael Brown. Protesters, police, and members of the press converged on the Missouri town, and, needless to say, things got a little intense. And during that first week of outrage and protest, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery and Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly were both arrested.
Lowery explained at the time they were in a McDonald’s in town they were using as a media center that the police decided to shut down, and he was arrested as he was heading out and recording what was happening around him.
They were eventually released and didn’t receive charges, but today, Lowery––who’s currently in St. Louis County reporting on the protests there––discovered he’s being charged after all.
His own paper reported that he’s being charged with trespassing on private property and interfering with a police officer because he didn’t right away comply with “repeated commands to immediately exit.”
Lowery has been ordered to appear in court and said to the Post, “I maintained from the first day that our detention was illegal and unnecessary. So I was surprised that a year later this is something officials in St. Louis County decided was worth revisiting.”
Post executive editor Martin Baron released a statement railing against the charges:
Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous. You’d have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident. Wes Lowery should never have been arrested in the first place. That was an abuse of police authority. This latest action represents contemptible overreaching by prosecutors who seem to have no regard for the role of journalists seeking to cover a major story and following normal practice.
Reilly, meanwhile, hasn’t been charged yet, but he said on Twitter he expects to be soon.
UPDATE- 9:08 pm EST: Well, that didn’t take long:
St. Louis County spokesman says @ryanjreilly is also being charged with trespassing and interfering with officer, same as @WesleyLowery.
— Valerie Schremp Hahn (@valeriehahn) August 11, 2015
Update- 10:15 pm EST: The Huffington Post released this statement from D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grim on the charges against Reilly:
The Huffington Post condemns the charges filed by St Louis County against our Justice reporter, Ryan J. Reilly, while covering the protests in Ferguson last year. Ryan has the full support of The Huffington Post in fighting these charges.
Almost a year ago today, Ryan was working on his laptop in a McDonald’s near the protests in Ferguson, Mo. A crime was committed at the McDonald’s, not by journalists, but by local police who assaulted both Ryan and Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post during violent arrests.
At least we know St. Louis County knows how to file charges. If Wesley Lowery and Ryan J. Reilly can be charged like this with the whole country watching, just imagine what happens when nobody is.
[image via screengrab]
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