First Amendment Terminated In Chicago
What happens when police get the bright idea that it’s perfectly acceptable to detain and handcuff reporters, and ignore that pesky little First Amendment thing? This from Chicagoist:
Chicago Police detained two reporters outside a hospital where a drive-by shooting victim was being treated Sunday.
Apparently at the request of Mt. Sinai hospital security guards, police arrived and told the media scrum to back up. The group had already moved from the sidewalk in front of the hospital to a median in the middle of Ogden avenue.
When some journalists refused to move further, police handcuffed and detained WGN-TV’s Dan Ponce and NBC 5 photographer Donte Williams. They did not charge the reporters, who were covering the story of a 6-year-old girl who was shot in South Lawndale.
“Your First Amendment rights can be terminated if you’re creating a scene,” the officer who handcuffed the reporters said. Video from their exchange shows no “scene” to speak of beyond the tension between police and reporters.
Terminating First Amendment rights sounds awfully akin to establishing so-called Free Speech Zones, coming soon to the Queen City courtesy of DNC 2012.
So we got that to look forward to.
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