Washington Post reporter explains why Ferguson police charged him a year after protests

Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery is being charged with trespassing at a McDonald&#039;s, a year later

(Image credit: AP/YouTube)

published 12 August 2015

On Aug. 13, 2014, police detained two reporters at the McDonald's in Ferguson, Missouri, apparently for failing to clear out of the public space quickly enough during escalating protests nearby over the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown a few days earlier. The reporters — Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and The Huffington Post's Ryan Reilly — live-tweeted and took cellphone footage of their arrest, and police released them after a public uproar.

Almost a year later, on Aug. 6, St. Louis County police charged Lowery and Reilly with trespassing and interfering with a police officer. That "almost" is the key, Lowery explains to The Associated Press in the video below. "They had a year of — a year's statute of limitations," he said. "Seemingly, they waited until the very last minute to start issuing summonses and start telling people who were detained last year that they are, in fact, being charged and that they need to show up in court."

Lowery says he's not sure what the police hope to gain by charging him, or why they waited a year — and St. Louis County executive spokesman Cordell Whitlock told The Washington Post he doesn't know why it took so long to file charges, either. But if Lowery doesn't show up in court on Aug. 24, he could be arrested. Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron called the charges "outrageous" and the original arrest "an abuse of police authority." "You'd have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident," he said Monday.

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Filing charges now is "a bewilderingly counterproductive decision," The Washington Post added in an editorial on Tuesday. "The charges aren't just counterproductive in the sense that society depends on reporters to gather facts and hold government, including law enforcement, to account. It's counterproductive for St. Louis County authorities, who once again are displaying the sort of petty behavior that primed Ferguson's communities for the explosion of protest that occurred last year."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.