Sacramento police put me in handcuffs inside City Hall — but I was there as a journalist | Opinion
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 — until Tuesday night inside Sacramento City Hall.
The incident occurred during a pro-Palestine protest that erupted inside the city council chambers at 915 I St., after Mayor Darrell Steinberg introduced a cease-fire resolution calling for peace in Gaza. As a credentialed journalist for The Sacramento Bee, I was there to write a column about the evening’s events.
After nearly 80 speakers and numerous disturbances, the mayor decided to recess the meeting and clear the chambers at about 9 p.m. The council would only resume with the audience gone, and would bring back just the media to observe the vote, which ultimately went 6-1 in favor of the resolution.
At first, many people refused to leave the chambers, chanting and calling for Steinberg to come back. After 90 minutes and a slow trickle of people leaving, only a few dozen remained. At 10:37 p.m., 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.
But let me be clear about this before I tell you what happened next: 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.
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.
“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,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition. “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.”
To reiterate: My Bee-issued press pass was around my neck the entire evening, and I’d also been credentialed a second time by city staff before entering the chambers. For the majority of the evening, I was sitting in or standing near the row reserved for members of the press, and the city communications staff — not to mention the entire city council and most of their staff — know who I am and who I work for. They were aware of my presence inside the chambers throughout the meeting and subsequent protest.
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, who noted that “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.
“It should have been made clear to the police,” Loy said. “Don’t arrest the press.”
What happened
It went down fairly quickly.
I realized at one point in the evening, after the mayor had ordered the chambers emptied, I was the only member of the media left in the room. From experience, I know that’s a rare and potentially important position; I’d never relinquish it unless absolutely necessary.
It’s also a position I had every right to be in; when Steinberg asked for the chambers to be cleared, and the protesters stayed, the room became a “closed-off” protest. And as a journalist, under 2021 legislation signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, I am legally allowed access to stay and observe such a protest.
And observe I did. 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. Surely, I thought, he was motioning to someone behind me? I turned to look.
By the time I realized no one was there, 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.”
While handcuffed, I loudly and insistently informed the cops that I work for The Bee. To their credit, they listened.
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, and I whipped around to record the rest of the interaction as the cuffs were taken off my other wrist. 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.
And that was it. I stayed until the last protester was taken away, left alone in a room with dozens of uniformed police officers.
“Just us, then?” I joked. “Great. Now I’ll go.”
Power plays
The entire evening was a laughable jumble of unnecessary security measures meant to make people feel better without actually accomplishing anything resembling safety. Admittedly, the city hasn’t seen this sort of civil disturbance for awhile, at least not since 2018, and officials are a little shaken. But that doesn’t make what happened to me OK.
“There is a disturbing trend around the country of journalists being arrested and prosecuted simply for being journalists,” Loy said. “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.”
It’s telling that the city of Sacramento and its police department have stayed silent about the detainment of a journalist inside the city council’s own chambers. Some cities have even apologized publicly for threatening press freedom and First Amendment rights.
Don’t worry, I won’t hold my breath for any such words. But if anyone thinks I’m intimidated by the police, the city or what happened Tuesday night, then they don’t know me very well.
This story was originally published March 22, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
