Wall Street Journal demands response after Black journalist handcuffed by Arizona police while reporting

Phoenix Police Department’s interaction with finance reporter raises questions about constitutional policing issues as agency enters second year of Justice Department civil rights investigation

The Wall Street Journal has called on the Phoenix Police Department to perform an internal review and ensure the constitutional rights of its journalists are protected after a Black reporter was handcuffed and detained while reporting outside a bank.

The newspaper’s editor-in-chief pressed Phoenix police chief Michael Sullivan in a letter in the wake of a recently publicised November incident involving finance reporter Dion Rabouin, who was filmed being put in the back of a police vehicle in November.

In a letter dated 7 December, editor Matt Murray wrote that he is “appalled and concerned” that the department’s officers “would attempt to interfere with Mr Rabouin’s constitutional right to engage in journalism and purport to limit anyone’s presence in a public location.”

Recently published video footage from a bystander shows an officer putting Mr Rabouin in handcuffs and attempting to place him in the back of the officer’s car. Roughly eight minutes into the video, other officers arrive. Mr Rabouin is released minutes later.

An incident report from arresting officer Caleb Zimmerman claims that bank employees wanted Mr Rabouin to leave the property and that he had refused. But Mr Rabouin, who was performing man-on-the-street interviews outside a Chase Bank branch for a piece on savings accounts, said no one at the bank ever asked him to leave.

“I saw a police car pull up. And the officer came out, walked into the branch, after about five minutes came out, and talked to me,” he told local news outlet ABC15. “He asked me what I was doing. I identified myself. I said, ‘I’m Dion Rabouin. I’m a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. I’m working on a story. I told the people in the branch what was going on.’ And he said, ‘Well you can’t do that.’”

Mr Rabouin said that the officer did not want to look at his press credentials or let him walk away from the property.

“’If this isn’t public property and I don’t have a legal right to be here, if you’re telling me that’s not what this is, fine, I’ll move.’ And he … shifted his body to keep me from moving or going anywhere,” Mr Rabouin told ABC15. “And after we talked a little more, he said, ‘I’m done with this.’ And he started grabbing me.”

Mr Rabouin said he filed an internal complaint with the agency, which he said told him there was no evidence of wrongdoing.

A statement from a spokesperson from The Wall Street Journal said the newspaper is “deeply concerned” about the incident.

“We have asked the Phoenix Police Department to pursue a thorough investigation into the incident and explain why their officers needlessly escalated the situation and took these aggressive steps. We await their response,” according to the statement. “No journalist should ever be detained simply for exercising their First Amendment rights.”

The Phoenix Police Department already is under investigation from the US Department of Justice, which opened a civil rights probe into the agency in August 2021 for allegations of discriminatory policing, retaliation against protesters, and unconstitutional interactions with people with disabilities, among other charges.