By Crescenzo Vellucci
Vanguard Sacramento Bureau Chief
SACRAMENTO, CA – Sacramento city police can be a feisty bunch, and just this past week arrested – albeit briefly – a Sacramento Bee staffer covering a demonstration during a Sacramento City Council meeting by those sympathetic to the plight of Gaza Palestinians.
The closest I came to being handcuffed while reporting in a decades-long career in the news business was just a few years ago at a police brutality protest in East Sacramento. City police earlier pushed and shoved news reporters who were simply and legally covering the demonstration, doing their job.
Later, police arrested a handful of reporters – including one from the Sac Bee – who were covering the arrest of dozens of people marching peacefully down an empty street.
The laugh’s on me, maybe – I understand those arrested pocketed thousands of dollars each in a false arrest claim.
But as police began arrests, an unidentified officer somewhere in the dark yelled at me, “Vellucci, are you covering this?” I answered yes (for the Vanguard), and the officer turned and told other officers to leave me alone.
That wasn’t the case last Tuesday when the Bee’s Robin Epley – with her press ID in full view – was handcuffed by police only to be released minutes later.
“I’ve been physically assaulted while reporting. I’ve even been shot at while reporting. But I have never been placed in handcuffs while reporting,” wrote Epley later, adding after the council asked the room be cleared, “the police moved in. More than 50 officers streamed into the room, issued a final warning and whittled the crowd down to a final 12. Then the arrests began.”
The Bee staffer insisted, “There is no reason, no action I took, nothing I said nor did that provoked these officers of the Sacramento Police Department to handcuff me. Their actions alone resulted in the illegal detainment of a working and visibly credentialed journalist, no matter how short the duration of my time in their custody.”
Epley added, “I had every right to be where I was, doing what I was doing. Police handcuffing me, a journalist in City Hall, was an egregious violation of my constitutional rights.”
And the reporter is correct. I’ve was threatened with arrest as bureau chief of a Capitol news service when covering a protest – once again, a cop stepped in to prevent it. And another time when covering a hearing because I wouldn’t give up my seat to a lawmaker. I didn’t give in either time – and wasn’t arrested.
And, I’ve had court deputies make reporting difficult, but the judge – obviously aware of our rights from their ConLaw class in law school – always backed me, not the deputy.
But it doesn’t mean police don’t often attempt to intimidate reporters with threats of arrest. That’s actually illegal.
The Bee’s Epley quoted David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, who said, “No one has any business arresting a reporter even for a few seconds, no one should be arresting a reporter who is simply there covering the news.”
Loy, in assessing the Epley detainment, added, “I see problems on two levels: The city council staff should have told the police, ‘There’s press in here, watch out.’ And two, the officers should have looked for the press pass or seen it around your neck.”
But, as Epley maintains, “Despite all of those self-evident signs that I was there as a working journalist, reporting and shooting video, I was still placed in handcuffs by Sacramento police.”
“They shouldn’t be arresting people who aren’t causing harm,” said Loy, adding “the spirit of the Brown Act” should have been enough to protect any journalist’s presence in the chambers that night, and during the protest. The Brown Act, or “Open Meeting Law,” is a California law that ensures the public’s right (and therefore the media’s right) to attend local legislative meetings, wrote Epley.
“It should have been made clear to the police,” Loy said, as Epley reported, “Don’t arrest the press.”
The Bee staffer said she “realized at one point…I was the only member of the media left in the room. I’d never relinquish it unless absolutely necessary,” acknowledging what good reporters know….if you’re the only media type in the area, you have an exclusive.
Under 2021 California legislation – which should not have been necessary but for overly-excited, unconstitutionally-aware police – reporters are allowed to enter a “closed-off” protest even if police tell them they cannot. Epley corrected stated, “I am legally allowed access to stay and observe such a protest.”
Epley noted, “I stood next to the back row reserved for journalists, filming the arrests as they were happening. The dozen protesters left in the room were arrested one by one, starting at 10:50 p.m., as more than 50 cops swarmed in groups of two and three, picking off the people standing closest.
“Around 10:52 p.m., I noticed the officer who was directing these arrests point at me…a couple of officers had already descended on my back, ripping my cellphone from my hand and locking me in a pair of black metal cuffs quicker than you can say, “Congress shall make no law abridging (…) the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Epley added, “While handcuffed, I loudly and insistently informed the cops that I work for The Bee. Suddenly, the officer who had pointed at me pointed again and said, ‘Oh, not her.’ My cellphone was placed back in my now-free right hand. In the video, you can hear one lieutenant say, ‘Let me see your press pass,’ which was still hanging around my neck on a Sacramento Bee-branded lanyard.”
“There is a disturbing trend around the country of journalists being arrested and prosecuted simply for being journalists,” Loy said in the interview with the reporter, adding, “Whether the arrest just happened for just a few minutes or someone is prosecuted, these are clear threats to press freedom and the First Amendment.”
As Epley stated, and I’ll attest, the threat of arrest should not stop reporters from doing their duty to the public. The constitution says it, and our history of a free press guarantees it.
Congrats to the Bee’s Epley. Some reporters may not have been so steadfast.
I did a tour in Vietnam as a war correspondent. If incoming small arms, rockets and mortar fire didn’t stop me covering a story then I seriously doubt a police officer with a freshly-starched uniform, bad disposition and not-too-good-a-grade in their Civics class will make much of a difference.
