Ramsey Orta Can’t Breathe
By Josmar Trujillo
Fair & Accuracy in Reporting (11/8/17)
When we went to a New York state prison to visit Ramsey Orta, the young man who filmed a police officer choking Eric Garner to death on a Staten Island sidewalk in 2014, we didn’t even make it past the metal detectors.
Last year, members of El Grito de Sunset Park, an NYC-based group that organizes patrols to film cops on the street, as Ramsey did, drove with me a few hours north to Fishkill prison, where Ramsey was being held. We called ahead to confirm visiting hours and protocols, and we brought clothes and books that had been donated to him by supporters and friends back in the city.
When we arrived at Fishkill, we put our belongings into a locker and went up to the main visitors desk to check in, where a prison official told us Ramsey wouldn’t be allowed to see any visitors at all. Why? They wouldn’t tell us. We weren’t even allowed to leave the clothes and books behind for Ramsey. Frustrated and tired, we had no choice but to drive back down to the city.
For months, Ramsey had been telling friends that the Fishkill prison guards were targeting him, much like the local Rikers Island guards—who he says tried to kill him with verifiably rat-poisoned food—had back home. He didn’t feel safe at Fishkill, either, he said. In fact, since he’d filmed his friend’s death at the hands of an NYPD detective, he hadn’t felt safe even out in public.
Targeted by police for political punishment
We believe the police have continuously targeted Ramsey since his video footage went viral, raiding his home and arresting him on questionable drug charges in 2015, and even arresting him in 2016 for “obstructing governmental administration” after he filmed Manhattan cops arresting a motorist. After the 2015 arrest, for which he took a plea deal that led to the four-year sentence he’s serving, an unnamed NYPD source told the New York Daily News (2/10/15), “He took the video,” alluding to the Garner video, “now we took the video,” referring to surveillance footage police claim showed Orta selling drugs.
A few months later, we decided to try again to visit Ramsey, this time at the Franklin Correctional Facility, where he’d been moved. Franklin was an almost seven-hour drive from the city, ten miles from the Canadian border. It’s not clear why Ramsey was moved so far north. His friends have suggested that he was moved as a form of punishment, meant to make it harder for people to visit him. Recently, Ramsey wrote a letter detailing abuse at the hands of prison guards at Franklin, where he has been repeatedly thrown into solitary confinement—which is recognized as a form of torture.
Of course, Ramsey’s plight is no more outrageous than any of countless people of color languishing behind prison bars. But his experience captures important truths about how targeted, politicized punishment is directed at those who dare to create media that challenge authority.
One of those truths is that punishment is connected to public attention and outrage. And when, despite the hand-wringing about media under attack from Donald Trump (Barack Obama’s role apparently forgotten), the corporate media world can ignore the arrest of independent reporters covering public protests (FAIR.org, 9/26/17), the message comes through: It’s open season on journalists not in the fold.
In a world where it’s always open season on poor people of color and radical activists, Ramsey Orta’s saga suggests the most terrifying scenario for those in power might be to see those groups begin to take media into their own hands.
But the outrage withheld from the assaults on freelance or independent journalists (versus, say, mainstream reporters who are left out of a press briefing) pales in comparison to the ambivalence shown to the everyday person who picks up a camera to shine a light where few journalists would. In a world where it’s always open season on poor people of color and radical activists, Ramsey Orta’s saga suggests the most terrifying scenario for those in power might be to see those groups begin to take media into their own hands.
Imaginary line & media silence
Ramsey’s treatment, along with that of other activists and copwatchers, may be intended as a cautionary tale for anyone who would film police. But for those devoted to the idea that journalism is a sacred institution that protects and strengthens democracy, his case points to the need to challenge the imaginary line separating journalists and the rest of us, which limits those protections.
This distinction between bona fide journalists and amateurs is one that members of the press themselves reinforce, when their outrage meter bursts at the thought of a credentialed reporter being manhandled or arrested—but not the average person.
Ramsey Orta has no formal training, no press credentials, and probably had little interest in traditional journalism before 2014. But I and others consider him not only a journalist—he created media to bring information to wider audience—but part of a wave of citizen-journalists who are drastically changing both media and political landscapes.
Ramsey is from the streets of New York, and he’s had constant contact with the criminal justice system. It’s those qualities that can make it easier to connect to people on the ground, particularly in the communities of color, where there’s often suspicion and resentment towards reporters. In fact, I’d argue that it’s precisely because they don’t fit traditional journalistic models that citizen-journalists like Ramsey can not only be uniquely effective creating media, but also serve to inspire others who’ve historically been left out of media circles —specifically, poor people of color—so that they, instead of professional journalists, can begin to control the narratives about their communities.
The press will only be free of attacks from police, Trump or other powerful forces when its protections, and our outrage, begin to include everyday people. Journalism isn’t dead simply because billionaires like Peter Thiel or Joe Ricketts decimate the (let’s be honest, blindingly white) media that are—it’s dead when we choose to ignore the journalism and potential journalism all around us.
In 2015, Ramsey Orta was honored by the New York Press Club for his video. He is a copwatcher, filmmaker and a journalist—and, in the eyes of many, a political prisoner. Today, he is experiencing abuse and retaliation almost 400 miles from where he filmed the video seen ’round the world. A Facebook page organized by some of his friends and supporters, including watchdog groups like WeCopwatch, publishes updates on Ramsey and how to write him, or send him donations. Unfortunately, it’s one of the only places online where you’ll hear anything about Ramsey after he filmed a video that, like all great journalism, sparked a movement for change.
- Ramsey Orta Reports He’s Been Beaten By Prison Guards, Kept In Solitary As Retaliation For Filming Eric Garner Killing – The man who filmed Eric Garner’s death says he’s been beaten by corrections officers in a prison near the Canadian border and tossed into solitary confinement in retaliation for the video. A letter from Ramsey Orta dated Oct. 16 says he was roughed up by corrections officers at Franklin Correctional Facility that day and taken into isolation. He said a nurse was uninterested in taking a report of the abuse. “I fear for my life in this facility and can’t take the ongoing abuse anymore, please help me!” Orta wrote in the letter shared with the Daily News by his lawyer. … Read the Rest
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Photojournalist Detained At US-Canadian Border Ordered To Delete Images On Camera
Terry J. Allen, a senior editor for In These Times magazine, was stopped on by U.S. Customs and Border Protection while attempting to cross the U.S.-Canadian border on September 4, 2017 and ordered to delete images she had taken of the border crossing.
Allen, who has reported for the Guardian, Boston Globe, Harper’s, and Salon, told Freedom of the Press Foundation that she took photos of buildings and vehicle congestion near the Highgate Springs–St. Armand/Philipsburg Border Crossing connecting Quebec and Vermont. She was traveling with a friend at the time and she stepped out of the car to take photos while stuck in traffic, according to an account she wrote about her experience for the online news site VTDigger.
When Allen arrived at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint approximately thirty minutes later, a CBPagent asked Allen if she had been photographing the area. She responded that she had and that she was a journalist who often photographed border patrol stations.
Allen told Freedom of the Press Foundation that the agent, whose name she did not specify, then demanded her phone to delete the images she had taken. She refused to hand over the phone and told the agent that the images were on a camera, not her phone.
Allen wrote in VTDigger that she eventually deleted the images from her camera.
“Look you don’t have the right to demand this, but, here, I’ll delete the SD card in my camera,” she told the agent.
After checking the display of her camera to confirm that the images had been deleted, the CBP agent continued to demand Allen’s phone and after she again refused, he instructed the two of them to park and enter a nearby building.
Allen and her companion were then questioned by a second CBP agent, Supervisor Mayo, who showed the journalist a copy of a provision in the Department of Homeland Security’s Code of Conduct in response to her question about which regulations prohibit photography.
According to the provision, people need permission to photograph space occupied by a federal agency. The text of the provision, however, permits photographs of building entrances and lobbies for news purposes:
Except where security regulations, rules, orders, or directives apply or a Federal court order or rule prohibits it, persons entering in or on Federal property may take photographs of–
(a) Space occupied by a tenant agency for non-commercial purposes only with the permission of the occupying agency concerned;
(b) Space occupied by a tenant agency for commercial purposes only with written permission of an authorized official of the occupying agency concerned; and
(c) Building entrances, lobbies, foyers, corridors, or auditoriums for news purposes.
41 CFR 102-74.420
After showing Supervisor Mayo her camera to prove the photos of the border stop had been deleted, he returned both passports, and Allen and her friend were permitted to depart.
Stephanie Malin, a spokesperson for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told Freedom of the Press Foundation in an email:
“CBP Privacy policy prohibits us from discussing the details of a specific individual’s inspection however while photography of federal facilities from outside is not prohibited for news purposes, all CBP federal inspection stations lend travelers a certain level of privacy protection under U.S. law and we must seek passenger permission to take photos of them if the photos show enough detail to identify someone or their property (vehicle, etc.). Additionally our officers are cognizant of the security risks that can accompany individuals taking photos of the ports, for example to be used to identify smuggling opportunities or to accomplish other nefarious activity. While we understand that was not the intent in this case, these are reasons why our officers may ask individuals not to take photos or ask to see the photos that have been taken.”