A Los Angeles Times reporter was briefly detained by police while covering the protest in Echo Park Thursday evening.
James Queally was covering the protest when he was detained, along with protesters after police issued a dispersal order for the area, The Times reported.
The order was issued about 8:30 p.m. at Lemoyne Street and Park Avenue, in front of the office of Los Angeles City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell’s district office, and a designated protest zone was established on Glendale Boulevard, north of Park Avenue, and a media viewing area at the northwest corner of Glendale Boulevard and Park Avenue, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
The department tweeted a short time later “Penal Code Section 409. Every person remaining present at the place of any riot, rout or unlawful assembly, after the same has been lawfully warned to disperse, except public officers and persons assisting them in attempting to disperse the same, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
“As a reminder, members of the media are also to obey the dispersal orders.”
Queally was later released “after inquiries by Times editors and its attorney,” the paper said.
LAPD Capt. Stacy Spell told The Times before Queally’s release that if he “hadn’t done anything out of character” during the protest he would be released.
“I wouldn’t expect James would do anything out of character, but we have to make sure that that wasn’t the case,” Spell told The Times.