WSJ demands answers after Black journalist is handcuffed and detained in Phoenix

A Wall Street Journal reporter was handcuffed and detained while conducting man-on-the-street interviews outside an Arizona bank location.

Reporter Dion Rabouin, who is Black, was visiting family for Thanksgiving when he tried to interview passersby on a sidewalk for an ongoing story about savings accounts outside a Chase Bank branch in Phoenix, and he identified himself as a journalist when representatives from the bank approached but was not asked to leave, reported KNXV-TV.

“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,” Raboin said. “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.’”

Rabouin said he volunteered to stop reporting from the bank, but video recorded by a bystander shows the officer handcuff him and place him in the back of a police cruiser and threaten to shove him if he failed to comply.

The video shows Rabouin repeatedly identified himself as a reporter for the Journal, but the officer ignored him and then threatened the bystander with arrest.

Other officers showed up about 15 minutes later and Rabouin was released, and bank representatives apologized.

Rabouin received a call weeks later from a police official, who said a review had showed the officer did nothing wrong, but the newspaper's top editor sent a letter Dec. 7 to Phoenix police chief Michael Sullivan and the department's media relations unit seeking a review of the incident.

“No journalist should ever be detained simply for exercising their First Amendment rights,” the newspaper said.

The police department, which is already under U.S. Department of Justice review for allegedly retaliating against those exercising First Amendment rights, say the incident occurred on private property, but the matter was placed under review by the Professional Standards Bureau.

“The alarming number of incidents we’ve seen over the last several years where police have detained, arrested, or assaulted journalists who were doing their jobs threatens to chill this kind of essential newsgathering," said Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. It’s time for the law enforcement community to hold itself accountable for its actions. The Phoenix police department can start now.”