Attorney for an Asian American CNN producer who was detained in Minnesota while covering protests following the death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright, said the producer was thrown to the ground and asked if she speaks English, according to The Hill.
In a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) Carolyn Sung’s attorney said her client was attempting to comply with a dispersal order when police grabbed her “by her backpack, threw her to the ground, zip-typing her hands behind her back.”
One of the troopers allegedly yelled “do you speak English?” at her during her detainment, the attorney wrote.
Once she was taken to jail, the lawyer says she was “patted down and searched by a female officer who put her hands down Sung’s pants and in her bra, fingerprinted, electronically body-scanned, and ordered to strip and put on an orange uniform before attorneys working on her behalf were able to locate her and secure her release, a process that took more than two hours.”
In a statement on Saturday, Walz wrote, “a free press is foundational to our democracy. Reporters worked tirelessly during this tumultuous year to keep Minnesotans informed. I convened a meeting today with media and law enforcement to determine a better path forward to protect the journalists covering civil unrest.”
