Thread by @JamesQueallyLAT

Trying to organize my thoughts here: First and foremost thanks to all the journalists, friends, sources and others who made noise tonight to get me out. @ShotOn35mm for filming it & @steffdaz for calling my fiancee. I was mostly worried about her finding out via Twitter.

It is insane to me that I wrote this story 7 days ago. Lexis and I were standing next to one another tonight. I definitely made some joke about like "they wouldn't do this again, right?" Clearly my comedic timing is off.

Gonna try and do this objectively. Some facts: Yes, @LAPDHQ declared a dispersal order. They gave people well over 20 minutes to disperse. They had been getting hit with strobe lights and been taunted, but I didn't see anything thrown at them until after they charged the crowd.

That being said, the protesters who had been engaging with them were starting to backpedal about a 30 seconds to a minute before the dispersal order changed to "you are no longer free to leave, you are under arrest."

At that point, officers appeared from an adjacent alleyway on Lemoyne and kettled people in. Most protesters at that point put their hands up and waited to be arrested. I was standing in the space between the police line and the protesters when I got grabbed.

I announced myself as press several times, and credit to the arresting officers, they checked my credential pretty quickly and got a supervisor. They seemed to be aware this was ... not how things were supposed to go.

Then I got to meet Sgt. Etheridge. Sgt. Etheridge, objectively speaking, is an asshole. Didn't care I was press and when explained to him this was a bad idea and abnormal as compared to the dozens of LAPD protests I had covered in the past, he said "this is the policy tonight."

From there the arresting officers did what they were told. They were polite. Two other ranking officers showed up, figured out who I was (thanks again to all the Twitter noise), and let me go. I appreciate that, and I can acknowledge mistakes were made and move on. BUT...

There are still @KNOCKdotLA reporters in custody. @ShotOn35mm called me after I got out, told me he was STILL in a kettle. I managed to get hold of an officer in media relations who rushed to do something about it. I'm still worried he might have gotten arrested otherwise.

I'm not blind to the fact that crowd control situations are difficult. I'm not even mad I was initially detained. But once I was in custody, not a threat to anyone, zip tied, and displaying creds ... that should have been game over.

It wasn't. More than one officer asked why I didn't stay in the "media pen." I went over to the media pen, by the way. Media pens are deliberately setup to keep reporters AWAY from news. Tonight was no different. It was nowhere near the protests or action in the park.

I'm a cops' kid. Policing is hard. I have a lot of respect and sympathy for officers. But the LAPD has a long history of problematic behavior with protests & crowd-control situations. This is something that desperately needs fixing, and not just because I got zip-tied for an hour

Last night I saw less-lethal launchers used at close range on people who did not appear armed or threatening. I saw officers snatch up a tent and stoke tensions less than a minute after one of the main voices of the encampment was trying to de-escalate the situation.

I've repeatedly written about the department's over-reliance on mass arrests in these situations. They have been sued to high heaven over this, and they were recently excoriated over problematic use of less-lethal launchers like I described again.

This is how protest gets stifled. This is how people get hurt. Or worse. I'm being critical because I want you to be better @LAPDHQ, not because I don't understand the challenges. But #JournalismIsNotACrime. Neither is protesting.

Whoops, bad at Twitter: This story -- latimes.com/california/sto…