Investigation Clears Asbury Park Cops Who Arrested APP Reporter During BLM Protest (Video)

As police officers wrestled Gustavo Martinez Contreras to the ground while clearing out protesters in Asbury Park last month, newly released video shows he repeatedly tried to tell them “I’m a reporter” through his face mask.

Martinez Contreras, a reporter for the Asbury Park Press, was charged with failure to disperse — accusations that were later dropped.

Videos released Wednesday provide new details of the incident, which drew national attention at a time when members of the news media were being arrested and injured covering the protests over police violence that have sprung up through the spring and summer.

Though the charge was dropped, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni conducted an internal investigation to see if any of the officers involved in the arrest acted inappropriately. Those findings were released in a five-page report that encompassed interviews with 21 people, including 14 law enforcement officers, Martinez and a fellow APP reporter working alongside Martinez.

It also included a review of body-worn camera footage, some of which was released Wednesday.

Graphic video

According to the report, “Martinez had contact with three officers in the course of being transported to Belmar, but did not indicate to any of them he was a reporter. While being processed in Belmar, Martinez indicated he was a reporter only after an officer took possession of his property, saw his lanyard, and specifically asked Martinez if he worked for the APP.”

“Monmouth County’s investigation has confirmed that Mr. Martinez’s First Amendment rights were violated when he was tackled, arrested, detained and jailed while reporting the news at Asbury Park’s Black Lives Matter protest,” Martinez Contreras’ attorney, Shireen Barday, said in a statement. “While Monmouth County self-servingly concludes the actions of police were ‘not an intentional infringement’ of Mr. Martinez’s constitutional rights, Mr. Martinez was wearing a law enforcement-issued press badge when he was tackled, repeatedly identified himself to police as a reporter, was recording an incident of police violence against two teenagers when police targeted him and, remarkably, two of the officers happened to have their body cams turned off the whole time.

Following the arrest, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said his office would “figure out why this happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“Because in America,” he said, “we don’t lock up reporters for doing their job.”

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