A swarm of Chicago police officers issued confusing orders to a crowd of protesters and journalists to disperse from a march in front of the Israeli Consulate on Tuesday, the Intercept reports. “Nobody understood the dispersal order, nobody knew exactly where to go,” said photojournalist Josh Pacheco, who said that he was pulled off the sidewalk and arrested while walking away, trying to leave the area with other journalists. Police charged Pacheco and two other journalists with misdemeanor disorderly conduct, said Steven Baron, a Chicago-based attorney representing the journalists, who alleged the city violated the journalists’ First Amendment rights. Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling acknowledged the three arrests in a daily press conference on Wednesday morning and scolded the actions of journalists at the demonstration. “If you’re not moving, if you’re not complying with our orders at that time, you may be breaking the law yourselves,” Snelling said, before blaming journalists for being “so close” to protesters, which he said had obstructed officers’ ability to move about.
Pacheco — a freelance journalist who has worked with the New York Times, PBS, and Forbes — was one of at least three credentialed journalists arrested amid protests on the second day of the Democratic National Convention. Pacheco, who was carrying photography equipment with media credentials hanging around the neck, identified as a journalist to officers and displayed a press pass. An officer responded by snatching away their credentials. Pacheco spent the next nine hours in police custody. Also arrested in the same march were photojournalists Sinna Nasseri and Olga Federova, who were released by early Wednesday morning, according to social-media posts. Nasseri, whose photography has been featured in the New York Times and the New Yorker, wrote on Instagram that he was arrested while “documenting the protest tonight from a public sidewalk.” He shared video of himself standing in handcuffs next to several officers with his camera still hanging around his neck.
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