Josie Huang is a news reporter for the Los Angeles NPR affiliate KPCC and area news outlet LAist. Saturday night, she was arrested by Los Angeles Sheriff Department while covering arrests following an ambush shooting of two police officers in the Compton area of Los Angeles.
The LA-based journalist was covering the aftermath of the shooting outside the hospitals where the police officers were being treated and anti-police protestors had assembled. Huang was capturing an arrest of protestors on her iPhone when an officer turned to her. Her phone continued to record the event, the video of which she was able to share in a Twitter thread below. She was arrested and charged with obstructing the peace. One can hear her telling the officers, “you guys are hurting me” and “stop it.”
The Sheriff’s Department asserts that the reporter was not wearing proper credentials. According to LAist reporting:
Sheriff’s officials allege that Huang, an award-winning journalist, obstructed justice. The department initially refused to provide details of what happened, but later, Deputy Juanita Navarro of the
Sheriff’s Information Bureau confirmed that deputies took Huang into custody on suspicion of obstruction of justice by “interfering with a lawful arrest.” Huang said she was trying to document the arrest of a protester, an account in line with her video from the scene.Navarro also said Huang “didn’t have proper credentials,” but she was clearly wearing press credentials around her neck. A tweet from the Sheriff’s Department at 2:19 a.m. Sunday includes a false claim that Huang did not identify herself as a journalist. Huang told deputies at least five separate times that she was a reporter and KPCC staffer in less than a minute, according to the recording.
The shooting was captured by a nearby security camera and eventually shared by President Donald Trump with a message that “Animals that must be hit hard!” which has raised the profile of a horrible local tragedy to a national issue during a heated political campaign in which “law and order” is an issue.
Read Huang’s thread below: