CNN Journalist Reports On Being ‘Detained’ By Police As It Happens
“It is something I wasn’t expecting,” Jason Carroll of CNN said.
The police’s ejection of CNN reporter Jason Carroll from one of the protest sites in Los Angeles went viral on Monday. (Watch the videos below.)
One reason may have been that it caught in-studio host Laura Coates by surprise.
“Jason, what’s going on? … Am I seeing Jason Carroll being ― what happened?” Coates asked on her show as footage rolled of Carroll being walked away by cops with his hands behind him.
“I’m being detained,” he replied.
Addressing the officers, Carroll asked, “I’m not being arrested, correct, officers?”
Another officer could be heard saying to the journalist, “Did you hear what they told you?”
“No,” Carroll answered.
“We’re letting you go, but you can’t come back,” the officer responded. “Because then if you come back in, then you go. OK, please?”
“OK, thank you, officer,” Carroll replied.
The two exchanged pleasantries before someone with The New York Times walked by and let Carroll know he had footage of the encounter in case he needed it.
Carroll’s sound soon cut off.
Jason Carroll was detained as CNN was live, then told to leave and never come back or they would be arrested.
Coates asked law enforcement analyst John Miller for his take. Miller said police are having more difficulty identifying journalists in crowd situations.
“You have anarchist groups and agitators who show up and say, ‘Well, I have a blog, so therefore I’m press. So, therefore, even though I’ve been throwing bottles and screaming epithets, I’m not part of the protest. I want to be treated as media.’ So they sort through people one at a time.”
Amid accounts of reporters being shot by rubber bullets (perhaps one deliberately) as the protests against ICE raids continued, Carroll acknowledged his exchange with police was low “on the scale of risks ― but it is something I wasn’t expecting.”
Video shared later by CNN provided more perspective. An officer walked Carroll through the process of exiting with his crew before they were escorted away.
CNN issued a statement on the matter:
“A CNN reporting team was briefly detained in Los Angeles while capturing the events that were unfolding as police attempted to clear an area during the ongoing protests and police and military response in the city. We are pleased the situation resolved quickly once the reporting team presented law enforcement with their CNN credentials. CNN will continue to report out the news unfolding in Los Angeles.”
