Photojournalist Josh Pacheco recalled a hectic scene after a swarm of Chicago police officers ordered a crowd of protesters and journalists to disperse from a march in front of the Israeli Consulate on Tuesday.
“Nobody understood the dispersal order, nobody knew exactly where to go,” Pacheco told The Intercept, adding that they had been walking away, trying to leave the area with other journalists. “And that is when I was arrested, I was pulled off of the sidewalk.”
During their arrest, Pacheco, who was carrying their photography equipment with media credentials hanging around their neck, said they had identified themself as a journalist to officers. But Pacheco said an officer responded by snatching away their credentials.
“I did alert them that I was press,” Pacheco recalled. “It was very visible that I had my press pass.”
“The journalists were charged … for simply doing their jobs as reporters,” Baron said in an emailed statement. “We are disappointed that the City of Chicago chose to sweep the First Amendment under the rug with its heavy-handed tactics against working journalists.”
This is Chicago, they’re not exactly known for a light touch when it comes to the police. Still not cool.
Pacheco — a freelance journalist who has worked with the New York Times, PBS, and Forbes — was one of at least three credentialed journalists arrested amid protests on the second day of the Democratic National Convention. Pacheco, who was carrying photography equipment with media credentials hanging around the neck, identified as a journalist to officers and displayed a press pass. An officer responded by snatching away their credentials. Pacheco spent the next nine hours in police custody. Also arrested in the same march were photojournalists Sinna Nasseri and Olga Federova, who were released by early Wednesday morning, according to social-media posts. Nasseri, whose photography has been featured in the New York Times and the New Yorker, wrote on Instagram that he was arrested while “documenting the protest tonight from a public sidewalk.” He shared video of himself standing in handcuffs next to several officers with his camera still hanging around his neck.
