On Sunday night, three days after citizens of Ferguson marched alongside Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, in gratitude for Johnson taking over the heavy-handed police presence, and mere hours after Johnson gave an emotional speech apologizing for the police violence and promising its end, the savior of Ferguson ordered three journalists arrested for witnessing an apparently unprompted police crackdown on protesters.
Shortly after police in Ferguson lobbed tear gas and fired high-tech noise cannons at protesters, three reporters from major outlets attempted to walk down the street to talk to the protesters. Police approached them and ordered them to leave the area. Though the police had no legal authority to do this it was a public street with no imminent danger the reporters, one of them a veteran war correspondent, had perhaps heard enough reports of police in Ferguson intimidating and arresting journalists to know they should leave.
"Capt Johnson said walk away or be arrested. I started walking away. They followed and arrested us," one of the reporters, Robert Klemko of Sports Illustrated, tweeted. Another of the reporters posted a video clip showing Johnson ordering that the journalists be arrested and cuffed.
Their zip-cord cuffs were cut minutes later, but Johnson's arrests were nonetheless a success. The three reporters, and others in the area, now understood that crossing the police's ever-tightening list of restrictions on journalists, stated and unstated, no matter how arbitrary or unlawful, came with personal, bodily risk. And the police under Johnson's command saw very clearly how they were to treat the media.
