In L.A., police nightsticks are clubbing press freedom to death | Will Bunch

<p><img src="https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/v2/EBJJUSAPZG6SNJR7BNR6R34PAM.jpg?auth…; alt="EBJJUSAPZG6SNJR7BNR6R34PAM.jpg?auth=d7fe"></p><div><p>The latest Los Angeles protest march against President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation arrests took off from the city’s MacArthur Park uneventfully on Friday night, which might have been just as well for a British photojournalist named <a href="https://www.nickstern.com/">Nick Stern</a>. </p><p>Just two months earlier, Stern had been covering <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/protesters-clash-with-federal-… outside a Home Depot</a> in the L.A. suburb of Paramount, the scene of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), when, as <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg7vzrj6g3o">he later recounted to the BBC</a>, something struck him. He said there “was something hard sticking out of the back of my leg and my leg was getting wet from blood.”</p><p>That “something” turned out to be<b> </b><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/us/la-protests-journalist-injuries-p… three-inch plastic bullet</a>, which was allegedly fired by L.A. County sheriff’s deputies policing the protest, and which had to be removed by surgery at a nearby hospital. But the wounded 60-year-old Stern insisted <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg7vzrj6g3o">to the BBC</a> that he would return to the sometimes chaotic streets of America’s second-largest city as soon as he healed. He said: “This is too important and it needs documenting.”</p><p>At Friday’s march, Stern’s media colleagues were thrilled to see the veteran conflict photographer back on the job for the first time, but any joy was short-lived. When the 60 or so protesters reached the federal detention center where ICE detainees are held, Homeland Security officers called the Los Angeles Police Department for backup. Soon, as shown <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/acatwithnews.bsky.social/post/3lvxa5yy32s24">on multiple videos</a>, a line of LAPD cops was pushing everyone back, including journalists, and in short order some of the officers began swinging their batons.</p><p>According to witnesses, one of the first people struck by the police<b> </b>was Nick Stern. </p><p>“He took a baton literally on the chin,” journalist <a href="https://therealnews.com/author/mel-buer">Mel Buer</a>, who’s been covering protests in Southern California for weeks, told me by phone Saturday. “And he came away from that bleeding.” </p><p>Adam Rose, the press-rights chair of the <a href="https://lapressclub.org/">Los Angeles Press Club</a>, confirmed to me that Stern had been cut in the melee but this time declined hospital care, and was<b> </b>instead stitched up by his wife, a health care professional.</p><p>Stern’s newest injury was not an isolated incident. Rose, Buer, and <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/melbuer.bsky.social/post/3lvwxnq4mbc2r">online accounts of the protest</a> say a couple of journalists <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/adamrose.bsky.social/post/3lvx5dvgcd22o">were bloodied by police nightsticks</a>, photographers their saw expensive cameras slammed to the pavement, and about a half-dozen, including Buer, were detained at the scene by LAPD officers — <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/melbuer.bsky.social/post/3lvy6dreays2s">their hands zip-tied</a> — for at least an hour, maybe two.</p><p>Rose did not mince words after the violence Friday night outside the federal Metropolitan Detention Center, calling it “utter lawlessness by the LAPD” and adding: “They seemed thirsty to crack skulls.” The frustrated advocate noted that the pummeling and detentions occurred despite <a href="https://www.dwt.com/insights/2025/06/news-media-ice-protests-california… 2022 California press-freedom law</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/11/lapd-weapons-journalists-00448… federal court order</a> against the police detaining or firing projectiles at journalists last month, and orders from the LAPD top chief that should have allowed journalists to freely cover both the protest and the police response.</p><p>And Friday’s incident was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/us/la-protests-journalist-injuries-p… one of many</a> that have targeted journalists in the roughly 10 weeks since the Trump regime and ICE launched large-scale immigration raids in California. The press club’s Rose has maintained a spreadsheet that now chronicles <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/adamrose.bsky.social/post/3lr3qvbc4222u">more than 100 incidents</a> of alleged police misconduct in this summer’s protests.</p><p>This is an element of a dramatically escalating <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/trumps-attacks-on-press-freedom-e… against the First Amendment</a> and press freedom in an increasingly authoritarian America that needs far more attention than it’s been getting.</p><p>Since Trump — with his longtime mantra that journalists are “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/14/trump-press-journ… enemy of the people</a>” — returned to office in January, most of attention has been on his efforts to either intimidate or co-opt the large traditional outlets like <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/trump-cbs-paramount-media-… News</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/07/18/nx-s1-5469912/npr-congress-rescission-fu…;, or the <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/washington-post-la-times-en… Post</a>. They are owned by billionaires or corporations that are either inclined to back Trump, or which grovel because they need government favors.</p><p>That’s made street-level journalists like Stern, Buer, and the others who’ve been assaulted or arrested — freelancers or reporters for small independent sites — more important than ever. They are arguably the truth’s last line of defense, keeping tabs <a href="https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/01/los-angeles-fire-mutual-aid/"… community activism</a> right at the moment when legacy newsrooms are increasingly walking away from that function. They can’t be bought, so they are bloodied.</p><p>This isn’t only happening in Los Angeles, nor did it start with Trump’s inauguration. Arrests of working U.S. journalists <a href="https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/journalist-arrests-surge-in-2024/">… in 2024</a>, amid campus protests over the carnage in Gaza, and <a href="https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/journalists-are-facing-attacks-both… online press-freedom tracker</a> in the first six months of 2025 followed dozens of incidents from Georgia to Oregon, although California has had the largest number of assaults, arrests, and detentions.</p><p>“This aggression towards journalists has been a staple of Trumpist politics,” Clayton Weimers, the American director of Reporters Without Borders, <a href="https://rsf.org/en/six-months-trump-s-war-press-importing-and-exporting… in a report last month</a>. “The brutalization and detention of journalists covering anti-government protests is also common in countries such as <a href="https://rsf.org/en/serbia-rsf-alerts-eu-ongoing-police-violence-against…;, Turkey and Georgia."</p><p>Yet one thing that’s important to understand is that much of the ongoing assault against American journalists isn’t being undertaken by federal law enforcement, but <a href="https://capitalandmain.com/lapd-arrest-of-journalist-at-ice-raid-fuels-… local cops</a> or state troopers — some of them at least ostensibly under the command of reform-minded Democratic mayors or governors. Observers believe Trump’s restoration has given rank-and-file officers <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/chauvin-did-what-trum… permission structure</a> to unleash brutality on both protesters and the press, divorced from bosses’ politics.</p><p>Rose, who’s long been tracking the police and press freedom in California, said hostility and misconduct by the LAPD and other units has been <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/31/1089643078/lapd-media-echo-park-history"… a 25-year-long wildfire</a> that subsides and then flares up at moments of stress such as 2011’s Occupy movement or the 2020 George Floyd protests. “The Trump administration has — instead of being a fire suppressant tanker — they’ve been dropping napalm on the existing fire,” he said. </p><p>I reached out to the LAPD on Saturday by phone and then, as they requested, by email. I wanted their response specifically to the police action against journalists — especially in light of <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/judge-orders-lapd-to-stop-shootin… July 11 temporary restraining order </a>by U.S. District Judge Hernán D. Vera that bars the department from, among other things, detaining journalists while reporting. So far, the LAPD has not responded.</p><p>The LAPD <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/macarthur-park-protest-immigra… issue a statement</a> about Friday night’s incident, including the arrest of more than a dozen protesters, that is at odds with what the journalists who were present described. According to the police account, officers cleared the area after a crowd surrounded officers, struck cars, and threw objects. It said the responding unit “will continue to support 1st Amendment rights of all people. However, if violence or criminal activity occurs, laws will be enforced.”</p><p>Buer told me she’d only witnessed scenes of jubilation around 9 p.m. Friday when the MacArthur Park marchers met a small crowd staging an around-the-clock protest outside the detention center. She described “clapping and yelling and chanting, dancing, you know, really kind of a noise demonstration sort of atmosphere.” That changed abruptly after the Homeland Security agents outside the facility called in the LAPD.</p><p>“They” — the LAPD — “got heckled by the crowd and then set up a pretty haphazard skirmish line and then just right out the gate, began pushing — shoving pretty aggressively — batons in media’s faces,” Buer recounted. She said officers did not initially make an announcement that the assembly was unlawful, and seemed to ignore press passes — including a large one worn by Stern — or pleas from reporters that they had a right to cover the event. Before long, Buer said she and four others were detained by the LAPD and placed in zip ties by officers, whom she said didn’t want to hear about the July court order.</p><p>“It’s a frustrating experience,” Buer said. She said independent journalists are ”trying to tell the story of a resilient community that is pushing back against racial profiling and these immigration raids. And we are being obstructed from doing our jobs, and often violently so."</p><p><b>» READ MORE: <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/coup-military-parade-national-guard-de… Fort Bragg to LA, Trump enlists the military in a slow-motion coup | Will Bunch</a></b></p><p>Neither Buer nor Rose were aware of any mainstream journalists — that is, reporters from the Los Angeles Times or local TV stations — who covered Friday’s violence. Rose told me that’s a sign of a much deeper problem — that these legacy newsrooms <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/03/media/analysis-trump-world-press-freedom… already intimidated</a> by the risk of violence, or by how aggressive reporting of protests might be seen in a moment of rising authoritarianism.</p><p>The Los Angeles Press Club advocate said he hears in private conversations that “newsrooms are concerned about sending their journalists out into places where they might be unsafe. And so where these sorts of things happen, often the mainstream press has run away, which is not good. That is a chilling of constitutional rights.”</p><p>That only makes that bravery of independent journalists like Stern, Buer, and a dozen or so colleagues who’ve kept covering the L.A. protests when they others have gone home stand out even more. They are risking their necks for a free press in America that on too many other fronts is surrendering without a fight. </p><p>The L.A. street reporters are making a bold stand for our shrinking First Amendment rights, and getting clubbed in the head for it. Yet people continue to ignore their work, including not only too many folks in the mainstream media but also supposedly liberal politicians <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/10/la-police-ice-raids-protests/">like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass</a>, who has not responded to the press club’s frequent pleas for help with the LAPD. </p><p>They need to understand that the violence against reporters with press passes is the uglier side of the same disease that is causing the bigger high-profile newsrooms to capitulate — a tyrannical push to crush what remains of journalistic freedom in America. Because just imagine how the cops will act when the reporters and cameras are finally no longer there.</p><p><b>» READ MORE: <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/newsletters/will-bunch/sign-up/">SIGN UP: The Will Bunch Newsletter</a></b></p></div>