Photojournalist Says LA County Sheriff's Deputy Threatened Him Same Night KPCC Radio Reporter Was Arrested
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — A photojournalist is speaking out after capturing a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy threatening him on video.
Nash Baker says he was recording a protest last Saturday outside the St. Francis Hospital emergency room, where two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies had been taken after being shot in an ambush attack.
An unidentified deputy yelled and approached Baker threateningly to try to get him to leave.
"Get out of here," the deputy said, before yelling expletives at Baker.
That was the same night KPCC reporter Josie Huang was taken away in a squad car in handcuffs. Video shows she was surrounded by several deputies, taken to the ground and held down as she yelled she was a journalist with KPCC.
"When we cover press we do it for the law enforcement, for the community," Baker said.
The relationship between journalists and the Los Angeles County sheriff's department has been strained in recent weeks. Besides the arrest of Huang, Fox11 reporter Gigi Graciette recorded a deputy shining a flashlight directly into a news photographer's camera covering a building fire in downtown LA last week. Sheriff's Alex Villanueva reached out to apologize for that incident, Graciette said in another tweet.
CBSLA has reached out to the sheriff's department for comment and have not heard back.