Reporter Arrested In Baton Rouge Claims His Rights Were Violated
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Lee Stranahan, an investigative reporter and filmmaker, described his interactions covering the Black Lives Matter protests in Baton Rouge after the shooting of Alton Sterling and says the police violated his Constitutional rights by unlawfully arresting him.
Stranahan, who works for Breitbart, insisted to Rich Zeoli on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that he did nothing that should have prompted being taken into custody.
"I wasn't doing anything to violate the law. I was right near other photographers, right near other media people. I was filming. I wasn't closer to the police than they were and I wasn't blocking any traffic...I was just taken in. I was in prison, and people say, oh, you were in jail. No, it was prison. At one point, I was in a block for a couple of hours with long-term convicted people at this prison, including a second degree murderer."
He criticized the police's disorganized and inconsistent plan for dealing with the protests..
"What's going on with the police here in Baton Rouge, I'm a huge critic of Black Lives Matter and have documented how dangerous I think they are, but what's going on here though, in Baton Rouge, is different and not just because I've been arrested...I cover a lot of protests and I've never seen anything like what the cops are doing here. It's not the police themselves. It's not the individual officers. They're being given the worst orders I've ever seen. It's crazy what they are doing here. There is either no police at all, because the Governor ordered them to stand down. You've got to remember this is a Democrat run state and city here. They are either told to stand down completely, so there's no police at all, so it's anarchy. Or, it's overkill with military weapons and rushing in and everything else."
Stranahan believes that even protesters who were breaking the law had their rights violated.
"The protesters were violating the law. They were committing civil disobedience, which is, by definition, you're violating the law. When I talk about people's Constitutional rights, I'm not saying they were arrested unfairly. I'm saying they were arrested for violating the law and, in the course of that arrest they had their Constitutional rights violated...If you're going to arrest people there is a way to do it. It just wasn't done correctly. There's no other way to put it. It was done in a punitive way."
He suggested that he would be open to suing the police in Baton Rouge if the opportunity presented itself.
"I would like to. I'm not a lawyer. If somebody is suing, I've heard there might be some kind of class action suit or something like that, if there is, I would definitely be part of it."
