> Black correspondent Omar Jimenez had just shown a protester being arrested when about half a dozen white police officers surrounded him.
Is there any reason to assume racism? it looks like two other people in the camera crew got arrested and they don't look black. It looks to me like CNN is trying to play the race card to stir controversy when there are millions of other more likely explanations
I can't say exactly what the reasoning was, but watching the full video, they hauled off the black reporter alone, then after a substantial delay, arrested the others all at once. Almost as if they had an "oh wait people might notice this" moment.
It looked like they were hauling people off one-by-one, which could reasonably be standard procedure for riot situations. Isolate individuals from the group and handle them separately - that sort of thing.
Moreover, they started with the reporter, since he seemed to be the leader of the group (e.g. he was the one doing the talking).
I mean, there's being a leader of a group involved in a riot and then there's a reporting crew. If one of them is standing in place with a microphone and film equipment and explaining the situation in monotone while calmly asking what they need to do to comply, it's pretty clear which one they are.
The wording there with him seeming to be the leader of the group sounds like an anthropologist finding a completely unknown tribe of people. At any time, the police could've just used their words, instead of being silent, surrounding the entire group, then suddenly arresting one person and waiting a full 2 minutes (precisely two minutes) before simultaneously arresting the others.
So, your defense of these actions is that the cops can't discern the difference between press and rioters, so best just arrest them all "one by one"? What part of that is reasonable? Just because it's "standard procedure" does not mean it's justified.
You may have misread me. I'm not justfying their actions - I'm just saying it's not clear they were targeting solely the reporter. It's possible that the plan was to take everyone in custody, one-by-one. You have to start with someone and the reporter seems like the natural choice.
If it were only the reporter arrested, I could believe it was racism. Since the other two were arrested, not so much. It also helps that they seemed to have been the only camera in the area. I have been unable to find any other video of the arrest.
A Black reporter is more likely to be filming people similar to himself peacefully protesting, rather than focusing on the damages caused by agents provocateurs (there is video of the windows of Autozone being smashed by a dude who is definitely not a protestor).
Heck at this point the police probably have facial recognition cameras that identify a reporter and assign them a score based on how friendly their past coverage has been.
If it was because the reporters here were 'too close' then that does kind of fit the narrative the cops gave, except they should have told them where they should go instead of arresting them of course.
Still, does not make it racism. Plenty of cops make bad decisions, it doesn't make them all racist.
> If it was because the reporters here were 'too close' then that does kind of fit the narrative the cops gave
They were live on TV, so you can tell the cop's explanation was BS. When told they had to move, the reporter asked where was OK, at which point he was arrested. The crew was given no chance to comply with the orders.
Cutting off my post right before I say "except they should have told them where they should go instead of arresting them of course." is incredibly misleading.
Depends on your definition of racism. If you just mean "atomized, individual prejudice," you might be correct.
But this is textbook systemic racism, even if the cops aren't acting on a conscious bias. Even if their chief gave them clear orders explaining why, and the reasons ostensibly had nothing to do with race, it is still systemic racism because it falls into a pattern of systematic, nationwide discrimination which is irrefutable and that disproportionately affects people of color.
Recommend you read "So You Want to Talk about Race" by Ijeoma Oluo or "Me and White Supremacy" by Layla Saad to learn more about racism as actual experts on the subject understand it.
> doing there job
We have zero context for why they were being detained. We can assume they did nothing wrong, but it's just an assumption. It would be great if CNN released the video that preceded the detainment.
> Black correspondent Omar Jimenez had just shown a protester being arrested when about half a dozen white police officers surrounded him.
Is there any reason to assume racism? it looks like two other people in the camera crew got arrested and they don't look black. It looks to me like CNN is trying to play the race card to stir controversy when there are millions of other more likely explanations