By Kim Petersen

May 30, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - The despicable police murder of a person, another Black person, who allegedly used a counterfeit $20 bill has caused widespread revulsion among Americans. This time, however, authorities acted relatively quickly calling in the FBI and firing all four police officers at the scene — Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J Alexander Kueng.

George Floyd, who did not resist, was forcibly extricated from his vehicle by police, handcuffed, whereupon officer Derek Chauvin knelt for 8 minutes on Floyd;s neck while he pleaded that he was unable to breathe. Floyd’s death was the result.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has called for the arrest of Chauvin, although not by the officer’s name. Said Frey, “If you had done it or I had done it we would be behind bars right now and I cannot come up with an answer to that question.”

In contradistinction protestors have been hastily arrested while protesting Floyd’s murder.

Even the media were not safe from being arrested for covering the story of another police murder of a Black man. The Save Journalism Project responded in a press release:

The arrest of CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his crew on live television this morning simply for reporting on the protests of police violence in Minneapolis violates the most basic tenet of press freedom: the necessity of reporting what are at times uncomfortable truths for government authorities. The government possesses enormous coercive power, that as this episode clearly shows, can be all too easily applied to limit or prevent the press from reporting on their actions. The First Amendment exists precisely for this reason.

The arrest of Jimenez even underscores the reasons for the protests he was covering. No one has been arrested in the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. But Jimenez, who like Floyd is black, has been arrested. There was even another CNN crew near Jimenez at the time of his arrest, but Josh Campbell and his producers were, according to Campbell, “treated much differently,” and were obviously not arrested.

In the US, American journalists, especially if Black, can be arrested … for what? Reporting a live story? To curtail racism and prejudice from wider exposure? To protect the crimes of the US gendarmerie from becoming public knowledge?