Updated August 14 at 1:00 a.m. ET
Two journalists said they were arrested and detained Wednesday in Ferguson, Mo., while covering protests that have been raging in the wake of the deadly police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown last week.
Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post and Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post tweeted they were arrested while doing reporting at a McDonald’s restaurant in Ferguson. “Police came into McD where me and @ryanjreilly working,” Lowery tweeted. “Try to kick everyone out.”
Reilly later tweeted that they were arrested for “not packing their bags quick enough” at the McDonald’s. The two journalists have been covering the aftermath of the shooting of the unarmed teen in Ferguson, which has sparked protests in the suburban St. Louis town. Lowery said on the Rachel Maddow Show on Wednesday that the McDonald’s was located near “ground zero” of protests that have drawn national media attention.
In a first-hand account of his own arrest published in the Washington Post late Wednesday night, Lowery offered a detailed account of the arrest, as well as video of a police officer telling him to stop filming. Although he did not resist the officers taking him into custody, Lowery writes, they slammed him into a soda machine.
His account of the arrest includes this exchange:
“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” one officer told me. And I responded: “This story’s going to get out there. It’s going to be on the front page of The Washington Post tomorrow.”
And he said, “Yeah, well, you’re going to be in my jail cell tonight.”
A strong police force greeted protesters on Wednesday—Huffington Post‘s Reilly tweeted images of officers with assault weapons, wearing helmets, and peering from out of armored vehicles.
Lowery said police detained the two, though they were later released without charges.
Calls to the St. Louis County Police Department to confirm the arrests were not immediately returned.
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