Looking to policy

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel photojournalist Kristyna Wentz-Graff was arrested in November while covering an Occupy Milwaukee protest. Police said it was not clear she was a journalist, though her Journal Sentinel ID badge is visible in the photo.

By Kirsten Berg

As recent protests have proven, police-press relations are defined on a city-by-city basis, and sometimes even officer-by-officer basis.

Some departments have different policies towards reporters doing their jobs as a matter of attitude or training. For example, they may have a rule about not arresting credentialed or otherwise recognizable journalists or about dropping charges against them if they are detained.

Some of these regulations are spelled out, such as in New York where a police manual reads, “When incidents spill over or occur on private property, members of the media will not be arrested for criminal trespass, unless an owner or representative expressly indicates that the press is not to be permitted.” Though, as the arrests during the Zuccotti Park eviction proved, these regulations were not always followed.

But if the police and the press could work together and form a mutually accepted policy about treatment of the press during these sometimes chaotic events, what would it look like?

One answer may come from the Minneapolis Police Department. In 2008, the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis co-hosted the Republican National Convention, which became a source of tension for police-press relations when dozens of reporters were arrested while covering the demonstrations outside the convention center.

After the Twin Cities finished their hosting duties, Minneapolis Chief of Police Tim Dolan asked to work with the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), an organization of law enforcement leadership from major cities that focuses on police policies of which he is a board member, to craft a report about the event and evaluate what would be the best policies to adopt in the future for policing large events. Dolan specifically requested that one focus had to be on drafting best practices for how to deal with members of the media. (Lawyers representing the Reporters Committee and its hotline during the convention met with Dolan and others before hand to discuss exactly these concerns, and how police would work with the media.)

After a series of meetings that he conducted with members of the press, specifically reporters from local newspapers and television stations, the group came up with agreed upon recommendations. The result: an eight-page section of the report “Principles of Policing Mass Demonstrations” devoted to highlighting the importance of police-press relations in a democratic society, bulleted responsibilities for the police and the press to follow in these situations, and enumerated guidelines for police dealing with the media during such protests.

The document, for example, suggests creating a “cooperative” climate by having police meet with journalists before events when possible, setting up a process for easily and uniformly identifying journalists, clarifying rules about access and dispersal orders in writing, inviting journalists to observe police training, setting up media observation areas when they are necessary within a reasonable viewing and audible range of the event and providing ample numbers of public information officers to relay information or mediate conflicts. The guidelines also suggest excluding media from mass arrests of protesters when possible, for example by warning journalists when arrests are imminent, or, if media arrests occur, quickly releasing them.

The report also states that police should be able to expect that the press will do their part by carrying appropriate media credentials and understanding department policies and laws.

Chief Dolan admits that the topic of how to deal with members of the press can sometimes be controversial among his police colleagues in other cities, especially in matters where members of the media may be considered to be breaking the law.

Dolan said this even came up during the convention, noting that St. Paul had different policies than its twin city Minneapolis on this same topic. For example, unlike St. Paul, he said, Minneapolis would quickly “unarrest” reporters who had been caught up in massive sweep arrests, rather than detaining and charging them.

“In these cases we are not talking about participation in damaged property, we are talking about a failure to obey a command to disperse. In these types of situations, we recognize that a reporter covering a story will not obey that order,” he said.

He said with future events, especially ones like the conventions that can be planned in advance, he would consider issuing separate credentials for reporters covering events outside the convention floor so that his force would not have the burden of determining who is a reporter and who is not on the spot. He said the process should be open to all and that the requirements would be set so that new media, such as bloggers, could be accommodated.

He said he has shared his thoughts and experiences, though not necessarily these written guidelines, with other police departments though PERF, including with the future convention host cities Tampa and Charlotte. But, he reiterated, it is ultimately up to each department to choose what policies they think are best for them to adopt.

And police policies alone are not enough, as New York-area media advocates have had to reiterate in their struggle to get better treatment for reporters covering police action.

In New York, the police patrol guide actually states specific, favorable policies toward the press, thanks to a 1999 agreement between the force and the media. The guidelines include rules such as not interfering with videotaping or photographing in public places and that the media be given access within a clear sight of events—both of which press advocates say have been clearly violated by the department despite being on the books for over a decade.

To their credit, and as a direct result of a meeting between press representatives and the administration in response to the Zuccotti Park raid, Commissioner Raymond Kelly issued a department-wide “finest” message, an order read at 10 consecutive roll calls reiterating the non-interference clauses of the guide.

But just days after the Zuccotti Park incidents, more incidents of interfering with reporters popped up, including one videotaped encounter of an NYPD officer stepping back and forth to use his body to physically block a New York Times photographer from taking a picture of an ongoing arrest during an Occupy Wall Street demonstration in the World Financial Center. The near cartoonish actions of the officer using his body to stop seasoned photographer Robert Stolarik prompted a “Are you really doing this right now?” from the journalist.

This leads many media advocates to diagnose the problem, at least in New York, as an issue of attitude, not policy.

“The problem is not with the policies, they are good as written. I have been around long enough to see what this department has looked like under different administrations, and it has been as bad as it has been in a long time. It is a matter of approach and attitude,” said Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union, who has been monitoring incidents of police-press relations surrounding the Occupy protests in New York.

“The philosophy that seems to be coming form the top [of the NYPD] is to be aggressive with reporters, and until you see that change, you are not going to see changes on the street,” he said.

For one, they have been more receptive to complaints and concerns of reporter treatment since the eviction incidents, or at least quicker to respond, said New York Times vice president and counsel George Freeman.

Freeman was also present at a meeting between media organizations and the police department requested by advocates a few days after the raid. He explained that the finest message was an immediate and welcomed response to the concerns being voiced, but that it did not seem to produce immediate results as demonstrated by the other interference issues that happened in the days following. (He noted, however, that the NYPD responded quickly to a letter he sent about the incident with the Times’ Stolarik and said they were looking into the issue and would consider disciplinary action for that officer.)

He also said that officers at the meeting had informed him that there was ongoing police training about how to deal with members of the media, which itself was a response to a summer meeting about a separate press interference incident involving the NYPD. The department has since elaborated on the training, saying it includes rehashing NYPD directives about dealing with members of the press in lectures, handouts, slideshows and training.

But the NYPC’s Diaz said it again is an issue of in-writing, or rather in-training, versus in-practice

“You can say ‘yes, come do a class’ and instruct to the needs of the news media, what our rights actually are, but if the culture they are in and the messages they are getting are ‘well that is all well and good, but do as you see fit and if you think that the press is overstepping its boundaries, you make your own subjective judgments,’ it won’t do any good.”