A radio journalist has reached a $700,000 settlement with Los Angeles County officials over a 2020 incident in which she was taken into custody while covering a Black Lives Matter demonstration.
Josie Huang, a reporter affiliated with NPR’s LAist, was taken into custody in 12 September 2020, the night two LA sheriff’s deputies were shot in an apparent ambush. She was covering a protest outside the St Francis Medical Centre in Lynwood, where the deputies were being treated.
Huang was filming the scene of a small group of people heckling officers guarding the hospital at the time. The protest started after a series of demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd.
A video later emerged showing five deputies handcuffing and putting her inside a patrol car.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday gave the greenlight for the disbursement of funds to Huang.
“Journalists in Los Angeles County should be able to record police activity in public without fear of unlawful arrest,” Huang said in a statement after the supervisors’ vote.
“My arrest was traumatic, but I hope that some good can still come of this experience.”
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department had then said in a statement on social media that Huang “did not identify herself as press and later admitted she did not have proper press credentials on her person”.
Videos at the time, however, showed Huang saying she was with KPCC, as LAist was known at the time. She was also wearing press credentials around her neck, said reports.
After she was released from jail, Huang posted on X/Twitter that she was “filming an arrest when suddenly deputies shout ‘back up’”.
“Within seconds, I was getting shoved around. There was nowhere to back up,” she had said in the post.
The settlement with Huang includes “a requirement that the LASD [Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department] provide deputies with watch briefings on press rights before patrol assignments, like protests, in which they are likely to come into contact with members of the news media”, according to the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press.
It also includes the “requirement that the LASD issue written guidance to all employees on the laws and policies governing their interactions with members of the news media”.
Huang’s arrest had triggered widespread outrage within the journalism community and among advocates for press freedom. On 16 September 2020, the Reporters Committee and a coalition of 65 media organisations urged the LASD to dismiss all charges against her.
Instead of dropping the case, however, the LASD not only submitted it to the Los Angeles County district attorney, but also pursued a subsequent investigation in an attempt to persuade the district attorney to prosecute Huang, said the Reporters Committee, citing the Office of Inspector General for the County of Los Angeles.
“There was a thorough internal investigation into this incident and the appropriate administrative action was taken,” the department said in a statement after the settlement was reached.
“We understand the role of the media during newsworthy events and make every effort to accommodate them with a designated press area and appropriate access.”
“This settlement upholds the rights of journalists and helps ensure that what happened to me won’t happen to other reporters,” said Huang. She plans to donate a portion of the monetary damages from this settlement.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement that the settlement “is an important step in holding law enforcement officials to account”.
