California
California officials must let journalists cover encampment sweeps
In recent weeks, police across California have threatened journalists with arrests for covering evictions of homeless encampments. It’s unclear why — the journalists aren’t interfering with the evictions. But they are documenting them, and clearly officers don’t want that.
We joined a coalition of over 20 press freedom and transparency organizations to warn authorities from Los Angeles to Sacramento that their own state law supplements constitutional protection of journalists’ right to access restricted areas where newsworthy events occur.
Sign up to stay up to date and take action to protect journalists and whistleblowers everywhere.
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This is not a new problem. Police also violated the same law “left and right” earlier this year to arrest journalists covering protests against the Israel-Gaza war on college campuses and elsewhere. Check out our May interview with Susan Seager, an adjunct professor of law at University of California, Irvine School of Law, for more on that.
But it’s not just one law that police are violating. As the coalition explained, federal appellate courts nationwide have also protected the First Amendment right to record police.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — the one with jurisdiction over California – has specifically ruled that even if police are entitled to disperse an unpermitted protest, encampment, or other allegedly unlawful assembly, they can’t disperse law-abiding journalists. Even the Department of Justice agrees.
Police in California have struggled repeatedly to cite any legal basis for their actions, because there is none. They’ve accused journalists of unlawfully intruding on their “work zones” — whatever that means. And they’ve claimed large areas are “crime scenes,” presumably because an allegedly unlawful encampment was set up there. That’s a tactic we also saw in Atlanta last year, when police illegally dispersed journalists covering protests against the police training facility commonly referred to as “Cop City.”
Sure, police may close off limited spaces in order to preserve evidence, but there’s no precedent for declaring large areas where low-level nonviolent offenses occurred to be “crime scenes” in order to arbitrarily banish the media for no legitimate law enforcement purpose.
Officers test these spurious legal theories at their own risk. Freelance photojournalist Jeremy Portje sued the City of Sausalito, California, as well as numerous police officials over a 2021 arrest while reporting from an encampment. Court records show the case recently settled, although the details haven’t been made public.
April Ehrlich, another journalist arrested while covering an encampment sweep in 2020, also sued after the bogus charges against her were dropped. She was arrested in Oregon, not California, but Oregon also answers to the 9th Circuit.
Public radio reporter Josie Huang reached a $700,000 settlement agreement with Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over her 2020 arrest. She was covering a protest, not an encampment sweep, but the same principles apply — police conduct, whether evicting people without homes or dispersing protesters, is newsworthy, and the First Amendment demands that journalists be able to cover it.
Last year, Stephanie Sugars of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), called the Los Angeles Police Department among the most “atrocious” of press freedom violators nationwide. They’ve lived up to that billing in the last year, including with the ridiculous failed lawsuits against journalist Ben Camacho for publishing pictures the police department gave him, which ended in another $300,000 settlement bill for taxpayers.
But that may have underestimated other law enforcement agencies in the state, from the San Francisco Police Department’s unlawful warrant to search an independent newsroom’s files to the revelation that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department secretly investigated reporter Maya Lau on the plainly unconstitutional theory that her source materials constitute stolen goods. And now Sacramento is getting in on the action, intimidating reporters for covering news.
Let’s hope the coalition statement gets through to the offending agencies, even though the courts and legislature have not. Otherwise, Californians will not only miss out on important news, they’ll have to continue spending their money to pay for settlements.
California
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California
Inmate’s wife sexually violated during strip search awarded $5.6 million in settlement: attorneys
A California woman who was sexually violated during a cavity search while trying to visit her incarcerated husband was awarded $5.6 million in a settlement with the department of corrections and the hospital that oversaw the search, her attorneys said Monday.
Christina Cardenas, 45, told the New York Times she was left “traumatized” during an attempted visit to her inmate husband on Sept. 6, 2019 that ended with her going through two strip searches, a cavity search where a male doctor allegedly violated her, X-ray and CT scans, and a drug and pregnancy test, according to the lawsuit she filed against the two parties.
She was then hit with a $5,000 bill from the hospital that did the tests. But Cardenas will recoup that money and then some.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will fork over $3.6 million and the rest of the total $5.6 million settlement will be divided up between Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley Hospital, a doctor and two correction officers. All defendants denied any wrongdoing in the settlement, the Times reported.
But it wasn’t just the money. Cardenas said she sued the defendants so that the alleged misconduct and violations she was subjected to doesn’t happen to others seeking to visit their loved ones in prison.
“My motivation in pursuing this lawsuit was to ensure that others do not have to endure the same egregious offenses that I experienced,” Cardenas said.
The correction officers had a warrant to search any visitors of her husband, who has been in prison since 2001 when he was convicted of armed robbery, according to the Times.
But the warrant stipulated that the officers could only conduct a strip search of the visitor if an X-ray detected any foreign objects that could be contraband inside the visitor’s body. Cardenas underwent an X-ray and a CT scan and neither picked up any abnormalities, according to her lawyers.
Her lawyers also said a prison official tried to intimidate her during the intrusive ordeal.
“Why do you visit, Christina? You don’t have to visit. It’s a choice, and this is part of visiting,” the official reportedly taunted, according to chilling details Cardenas revealed in the suit.
Cardenas is being represented by Gloria Allred, the high-profile women’s rights attorney, whose past clients include Mimi Haley in her suit against Harvey Weinstein, Judy Huth in her suit alleging she was sexually abused by Bill Cosby, and the family of Halyna Hutchins.
“We believed the unknown officer’s statement was a form of intimidation used to dismiss Christina’s right to visit her lawful husband during the course of his incarceration,” Allred said.
Cardenas was also made to strip and squat over a mirror, which is a type of search usually reserved for inmates, Allred told the Times.
Allred was not immediately available for comment when contacted by The Post.
Cardenas further revealed that while being transported to and from the hospital, she was put in handcuffs in a “humiliating perp walk.” She also said she was denied water or bathroom use for the majority of the search.
And after the long-winded search and tests yielded no contraband in her body or belongings, Cardenas was not permitted to see her husband, Carlos Cardenas.
The traumatizing ordeal wasn’t the first time she had been subjected to a grueling search by prison officials.
Cardenas underwent a strip search to marry her husband — they began dating after he was behind bars — and said she had experienced difficulties during prior visits to him, but not to the magnitude of the September 2019 incident.
The settlement additionally requires that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation distribute a policy memorandum to workers to ensure visitors’ rights are protected when they are subjected to strip searches.
As part of the requirement, prison officials must give a copy of the search warrant to visitors and ensure they read and understand it. The officials also cannot exceed the scope of what is allowed under the warrant.
Sexual abuse and misconduct have been a systemic problem in California prisons. On Sept. 4, the Justice Department announced it had opened an investigation into allegations that correctional officers sexually abused female inmates at two state-run California prisons.
The federal Bureau of Prisons also shut down a women’s prison in Northern California — the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin — following similar allegations. The prison was dubbed the “rape club” after an Associated Press investigation exposed widespread sexual abuse by correctional officers.
With Post wires.
California
Here’s how to help victims of Southern California wildfires
The Line, Bridge and Airport fires have burned thousands of acres in Southern California over the last week, forcing evacuations and destroying homes and other structures.
Prompted by the destruction, families, community members and organizations have started fundraisers to help those who have been impacted by the fires.
MAP: See where the Airport, Bridge and Line fires are burning in Southern California
GoFundMe has included verified fundraisers to support communities impacted by the fires at www.gofundme.com/c/act/wildfire-relief/california.
Some of the verified fundraisers to help families impacted by the Bridge and Airport fires include:
The Salvation Army’s Southern California Division is operating two emergency shelters at the Jessie Turner Community Center and the San Bernardino County Fairgrounds for those impacted by the Line fire and is also prepared to help community members impacted by the Bridge and Airport fires.
As the fires continued, the organization encouraged anyone who is able to donate so that the Salvation Army can continue and ramp up its response efforts. Donations will ensure the organization can provide food, shelter, emergency services and spiritual care for families and first responders, the organization said.
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