Police arrested a New York Metropolis unbiased journalist this afternoon, August 6, for reportedly filming the vandalism of a number of Brooklyn Museum leaders’ houses in mid-June, the New York Police Division (NYPD) confirmed to Hyperallergic.
Samuel Seligson, a 32-year-old videographer who claims to have revealed work in Reuters, ABC, and the New York Put up, based on his social media, was taken into custody in Manhattan’s Decrease East Facet and faces two counts of felony hate crime and felony mischief expenses.
He’s the second particular person to be arrested in reference to the incident, which concerned the portray of anti-Zionist graffiti on the residences of 4 Brooklyn Museum leaders together with Director Anne Pasternak. Final week, authorities arrested 28-year-old illustrator Taylor Pelton, who allegedly participated within the vandalism, on related expenses.
Photographs of the motion confirmed purple paint splattered on Pasternak’s entrance porch, the place a white banner show with purple handprints learn “Anne Pasternak Brooklyn Museum White-Supremacist Zionist.” Her home windows had been additionally tagged with upside-down purple triangles.
In keeping with the Related Press (AP), Seligson didn’t take part himself however is accused of touring in a automobile with the activists and coming into personal property with them. Police are nonetheless investigating the incident, NYPD advised Hyperallergic.
Seligson’s legal professional Leena Widdi advised AP that NYPD officers raided her shopper’s Brooklyn residence on two events up to now week earlier than he turned himself in at this time. She known as the arrest and expenses “appalling.”
Hyperallergic has contacted Seligson, Widdi, and the Brooklyn Museum for remark.
Seligson’s arrest could also be among the many first of its sort in the US, based on the US Press Freedom Tracker, which has not recorded another incidents of journalists being charged with hate crimes.
“It’s actually necessary for authorities within the broader public to know and differentiate the distinction between protesters and journalists,” Katherine Jacobsen, who leads the Committee to Shield Journalists’s US program, advised Hyperallergic.
Jacobsen additional described Seligson’s arrest as “a technique to discourage reporters from going out and overlaying protest actions” and a “very direct type of censorship” that follows each a home and worldwide development.
The Freedom of the Press Basis additionally characterised Seligson’s arrest as “alarming” and an try and “criminalize journalism” in a quick assertion on X.
The vandalism incident concentrating on Pasternak and different museum leaders adopted a closely policed pro-Palestine protest on the Brooklyn Museum on Could 31 throughout which officers arrested dozens of demonstrators. The establishment mentioned it didn’t name the police.
Nameless activists concerned within the June 12 vandalism mentioned the graffiti motion was a response to the museum’s sources of funding, alleged ties to Israeli navy pursuits, and police presence on the Could 31 protest. Nevertheless, public officers together with NYC Mayor Eric Adams and President Joe Biden denounced the motion as “antisemitic,” drawing criticism from activists who known as for a distinction to be made between antisemitic and anti-Zionist gestures.
