Iowa journalist, pepper-sprayed and zip-tied by police during BLM protest, found not guilty of criminal charges

In May 2020, a Des Moines, Iowa, journalist covered a local Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest. A police officer patrolling the crowd pepper-sprayed her, zip-tied her wrists, and drove her to jail, despite her identifying herself as a journalist. She stood trial in March 2021 and was found innocent of the charges of failing to disperse brought against her by the police officer. 

Key Players

Andrea Sahouri is a 25 year-old journalist on the breaking news team at the Des Moines Register. She is a Palestinian American, which she believes played a part in how she was treated during her arrest, according to an interview with Axios. 

Luke Wilson has been an officer with the Des Moines police department for 18 years, according to The Guardian. 

Further Details

On May 31, 2020, days after the murder of George Floyd, which sparked a wave of national protests, Sahouri covered a BLM protest at a shopping mall in Des Moines. According to NPR, she brought her then-boyfriend Spenser Robnett for protection.

Sahouri covered the protests on Twitter as she attended. Protesters damaged a Target storefront, broke nearby windows, and threw water bottles and rocks at police, CBS Iowa reported. Wilson was one of several police officers who began dispensing tear gas through a device called a fogger in order to disperse protestors.

Before fleeing, Sahouri stopped briefly to check on Robnett, who had been hit by a projectile. Wilson approached them, and Sahouri put up her hands, NPR reported. Wilson sprayed them with pepper spray. Police body cam videos reveal that Sahouri immediately told Wilson, “This is my job … I’m just doing my job. I’m a journalist.” Wilson responded, “That’s not what I asked,” as he continued to spray her. When Robnett told the officer Sahouri was with the Register, Wilson sprayed him, too. 

CBS Iowa wrote that, at the time, Sahouri was not wearing a press badge as her colleagues were; however, the executive editor of the Register pointed out that press badges are not required in order to be protected under the Constitution. 

Nearby, a fellow Register reporter observed Sahouri’s arrest and began yelling to police that Sahouri was a journalist, while showing her own press badge, according to NPR. While the other journalists at the scene were released, Sahouri was not.

Wilson bound Sahouri and Robnett with zip ties and drove them to the Polk County jail on charges of “failure to disperse and interference with official acts,” according to AP News. If they had been convicted, they faced fines and 30 days’ jail time. 

Wilson reported that his unit was ordered to clear the area and pepper-spray those still around, according to NPR. “Once she didn’t leave, I’m required to arrest, because she didn’t disperse,” Wilson said during the trial. He insisted he did not know or hear her say that she was a journalist while arresting her, because he was wearing a gas mask, according to NBC News.

Wilson did not turn on his body camera, which he was supposed to, according to The Guardian. Instead, he claimed he was “unfamiliar” with the city’s body camera policy. Footage of Sahouri’s arrest was found on another officer’s camera. CBS Iowa reported that Sahouri continued her live coverage of the event and her own arrest from the back of a police van.

Sahouri was one of 128 journalists arrested in the United States in 2020, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker; of those 128 reporters, 116 were arrested while covering BLM protests. Only nine reporters had been detained in 2019.  

Sahouri’s arrest was criticized by press freedom organizations, journalists, and human rights groups such as the Society of Professional Journalists, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), and Amnesty International, according to NBC News.

“The decision to move forward with [Sahouri’s] prosecution flies in the face of the First Amendment. Law enforcement should never have arrested Andrea Sahouri in the first place simply for doing her job as a reporter,” RCFP wrote before Sahouri’s trial. “Andrea and other journalists like her played an essential role in informing their communities about the protests for racial justice and police accountability that took place last year, and how law enforcement responded to those demonstrations.”

Outcome 

Jury acquits Sahouri

During the trial, the defense showed the jury police body camera footage of Sahouri’s arrest. The footage confirmed that she had identified herself as press while she was being detained, according to The New York Times. 

The defense argued that Sahouri was simply doing her job and that arresting a member of the press for reporting on a protest was, in the words of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board,  “an attack on everyone’s rights to be informed and to hold those in power accountable for their actions.”

The prosecution argued that Sahouri, regardless of her status as a journalist, had been told to disperse and did not comply, making her liable for detention, wrote NBC News. 

On May 10, after less than two hours of deliberation, the jury found her not guilty, according to NPR.“ I’m thankful to the jury for doing the right thing,” Sahouri said after the trial. “Their decision upholds freedom of the press and justice in our democracy,” 

Journalists call the verdict a win for Free Speech, a positive precedent for similar trials

After the acquittal, Sahouri’s peers celebrated the decision, claiming it set an important precedent for trials to come. Maribel Perez Wadsworth, president of the USA Today Network, a Gannett-owned conglomeration of local media outlets including the Des Moines Register, wrote in an email to all network publications that Sahouri’s case was “an important victory for the First Amendment and for journalism.”

Shortly after Sahouri’s acquittal was made public, several other journalists who had been scheduled to face trial in similar circumstances were cleared of the charges against them. Tomas Murawski, of TheAlamance News, faced trial on March 31, 2021, for resisting a police officer while covering a protest in Graham, North Carolina, but the charges were dismissed five days earlier. April Ehrlich, of Jefferson Public Radio in Oregon, was scheduled to appear in court for trespassing while reporting on a homeless person’s arrest, but those charges were dismissed.  On March 19, prosecutors also dropped charges against Richard Cummings a freelance photographer in Massachusetts, who was supposed to stand trial for failure to disperse after covering a demonstration.