Chicago Police Arrest Several Journalists While Cracking Down On DNC Protest

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During the Democratic National Convention, Chicago police aggressively cracked down on a protest outside of the Israeli consulate. Officers carried out a mass arrest that included multiple members of the press, according to several independent reporters that were on the ground. 

Josh Pacheco, a photojournalist from New York City, and Olya Fedorova, a freelance photojournalist, were singled out by police and arrested and charged with “disorderly conduct.” 

Police reportedly damaged Pacheco and Fedorova’s camera equipment during their arrests, and they were released from the Area 3 police station in the early morning after being held in police custody for nearly 10 hours.

Sylvie Evans, a reporter with the Colorado People’s Press, was arrested and released about an hour after Pacheco and Fedorova. Sinna Nasseri, a photographer for the New York Times, Vogue, TIME, the New Yorker, and the Rolling Stone, was also arrested. He was the last arrested journalist to be released. (It was unclear if both were charged with "disorderly conduct" too.)

In total, National Lawyers Guild Chicago said the “repressive police response” resulted in at least 59 arrests. 

It was the second time this year that Pacheco and Fedorova were simultaneously arrested while covering the police response to a protest against Israel’s war on Gaza. 

On May 7, as documented by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, New York Police Department officers arrested Pacheco while he was covering a police raid against the last remaining encampment against Israel’s war on Gaza that was setup outside of the Fashion Institute of Technology. 

Fedorova was trying to photograph the violent arrest of a woman. An officer grabbed at her camera and then pulled her behind a line of police. Despite wearing a press credential and verbally identifying herself as a journalist, she was still arrested. 

Independent reporter Talia Jane provided exceptional coverage of the journalist arrests. Pacheco called Jane from the police station around 2 am, and Jane shared the call. 

“They like held us in the van, like in the dark for almost an hour,” Pacheco said. “I was freaking out because I was about to piss my fucking pants.” There was a lot of banging until finally the officers let the arrestees out.

Pacheco recalled that they were on a “street corner” and heard “no dispersal order.” They moved on the sidewalk with various press that were leaving the area. A white shirt officer yanked them from behind, ordered their arrest, and put them in zipties. 

“[Police] didn’t have big enough bags for all of my gear, and they kept trying to shove it into these whatever medium-size bags, and it ripped to the bottom and both of my cameras crashed to the ground lens first,” Pacheco added.

Tom Ahern, the Chicago police’s deputy director for news affairs and communication, according to Jane, ripped off Pacheco’s New York press credentials. Police did not return the credentials when Pacheco was released. 

When the credentials were ripped off, Pacheco claimed that they were taken so hard that it pulled on their hair. “You’re being arrested. You don’t get to keep your credentials,” the police official declared. 

“This is an obscene abuse of power. I can’t believe that I’m here again in the same summer behind bars for having a camera,” Pacheco stated. 

“The Chicago Police Department was repeatedly warned, by us and others, against dispersing and arresting law-abiding journalists covering protests and their aftermath. They should be held accountable for violating journalists’ First Amendment rights,” said Seth Stern, advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. 

“It’s not just about journalists—reporters who are detained for hours can’t report on police’s response to protests in a city that is on edge about a potential repeat of 1968,” Stern added. “The police are effectively censoring newsworthy, vital information, in direct violation of guidance from the Department of Justice of which they were informed both on newspaper pages and in private correspondence.”

Ahern was observed by several reporters as he threatened to take press credentials away from any reporter, videographer, or photojournalist who did not obey a police order to move, which was delivered with little explanation.

Stern told The Dissenter that Ahern “doubled down on unconstitutionality” when he threatened journalists with retaliation “for not obeying an already illegal and unconstitutional dispersal order. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the press’s right to report on police conduct at protests, even after dispersal orders. That should disqualify him from serving as a news affairs and communications official for the CPD or any police department.” 

Reporters had no idea where they were supposed to stand to cover the police response, and the goal seemed to be to obstruct media so that they would leave, which would reduce the amount of footage of CPD’s crackdown.

***

The evening’s protest was held by a newly formed group called Behind Enemy Lines. They promoted an action at the Israeli consulate to “stand with Palestine” and “shut down the DNC for Gaza.” They also pledged to “make protest great like ’68.” It had minimal support from the Chicago activist community.

Behind Enemy Lines drew the attention of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and Chicago police prior to the convention after they disrupted a volunteer recruitment event on May 18 at the United Center (the site of the convention). One United Center worker was allegedly involved in a scuffle. 

The potential threat posed by this group was further hyped by CNN host Jake Tapper during an interview with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker a day before the DNC kicked off.

“Most of the protesters, I'm sure, intend to be peaceful, but there are some groups that are making it clear they do not want to be peaceful. There's one called Behind Enemy Lines, for example, a leftist anti-imperialist protest group calling on its supporters to shut down the DNC, urging them to make bruises from Chicago police batons to 2024 back-to-school fall fashion.”

“If there are troublemakers, they're going to get arrested and they're going to get convicted,” Pritzker replied. But the governor emphasized that the “vast majority of people” protesting “want to have their voices heard” and would protest peacefully.

Chicago police cordoned the area around the Israeli consulate well before the demonstration. Hundreds of officers deployed, and police in riot gear were in a nearby train station, and dozens of media showed up well before Behind Enemy Lines. 

Mel Buer of The Real News Network captured video of fifty or so people as they arrived to protest at 7pm. Most of them wore masks and head wrappings, and the group moved into the street. They attempted to march before a police line stopped them in their tracks. 

Livestreamed video from Jon Farina of Status Coup showed Chicago police as they shoved media and protesters shortly after Behind Enemy Lines protesters tried to march. Police yanked signs from protesters, and there were several arrests before officers pulled back and surrounded the demonstrators. At that point the confrontational group tried to continue their protest in the middle of the street, and they set an Israeli-American flag on fire.    

The group linked arms moments after and pushed onward down the street until police issued a general order to the media to “get out of the street now.” Police declared the demonstration an “unpermitted event," and then they waited and watched Behind Enemy Lines for at least thirty minutes before the group tried to march again.

A phalanx of police pushed the group to the sidewalk. Soon after, a few of the protesters displayed their frustration with the lack of turnout as police refused to move out of the way so they could go to a Chicago Transit Authority train stop. “We don’t have the fucking numbers to do shit. C’mon, we’re fucking going home,” one yelled. 

But Chicago police believed this was a “demonstrator tactic” to “continue to tie up” security resources for the DNC. Several melees broke out on the streets as police tackled dozens of people, who were arrested, cuffed with zipties, held in police vans for hours, and later charged at the Area 3 police station. 

CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling spoke to press, who were seemingly not targeted by police, after the protest was dispersed and arrestees were being loaded into vans. Snelling expressed pride for how officers had handled themselves and made it clear that the police never intended to allow Behind Enemy Lines to assemble for more than a brief amount of time.

“Let me explain something to you about what we’ve studied about demonstrator tactics. We have people who showed up here to commit acts of violence. They wanted chaos. There was also vandalism,” Snelling said. (Video of the action shows police instigating much of the chaos that made the scene unsafe for 

He maintained that the group had no intent to go home when they asked to be allowed to leave for a train stop. “Sometimes people will do that and they’ll tell you that they’re going in one direction and they’ll continue to move on because they want to tie up the resources. We gave them multiple dispersal orders. We gave them a reasonable amount of time to disperse.”

Snelling refused to have his officers out in the city “all night following people who [had] violent intent because we saw it. And vandalism.”

Asked by a reporter what violence or vandalism was committed, Snelling said protesters had “walked right into [his] police officers.” He offered no specific example of vandalism.

"What we witnessed in the Loop tonight was pandemonium," asserted Jinx Press, a radical journalism collective in Chicago that covered the protest. "No audible and clear dispersal orders with routes of exit given, police directing people to go directions that were blocked, mass confusion, cops snatching and grabbing person after person."

"However CPD spins this in the morning, they clearly violated police directives. And News Affairs was there the whole time."

Chants of “Why are you arresting press?” were heard during the chaos. Jane sparked the chant as they saw their colleagues being hauled off by police for doing their jobs. 

“No major outlets have yet reported that CPD arrested 4 credentialed media last night, despite all of them being here,” Jane posted. “We yell because if we didn’t no one would know."