CNN Reporter and Crew Arrested During Minneapolis Demonstrations

In America, we take our free press very seriously.  Sure, the mainstream media can be a bit chaotic and more than a little silly at times, but simply being allowed to spread news around the nation is a privilege that not everyone in this world has.

This becomes especially true as the world comes crumbling down around us.  We rely on reporters and journalists to make sense of it all and to warn us when it’s time to move out of the way of a coming calamity.

It appears that CNN had a little trouble with that concept last night in Minneapolis.

A CNN crew was arrested while giving a live television report Friday morning in Minneapolis — and then released about an hour later — as the crew covered ongoing protests over the death in police custody of George Floyd.

State police detained CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez, his producer and his photojournalist shortly after 5 a.m. CT (6 a.m. ET) as Jimenez was reporting live from a street south of downtown, near where a police precinct building was earlier set ablaze.

Jimenez could be seen holding his CNN badge while reporting, identifying himself as a reporter, and telling the officers the crew would move wherever officers needed them to. An officer gripped his arm as Jimenez talked, then put him in handcuffs.

“We can move back to where you like. We are live on the air here. … Put us back where you want us. We are getting out of your way — wherever you want us (we’ll) get out of your way,” Jimenez said to police before he was led away.

Police say that they detained the crew after they failed to move out of their way, and after what police say were repeated instructions to do so.

Jimenez told his audience after the arrest that he and the crew were treated well by those who detained them.