Boston journalist Chris Faraone has filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department, claiming officers beat and arrested him illegally while he was there covering the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street for the Boston Phoenix.
Faraone, 34, now an editor at the alternative DigBoston , says in the suit that on Sept. 17, 2012, he was “photographing, observing and investigating” the scene at One Chase Manhattan Plaza. The suit, according to various reports, says an officer ordered other officers to “stop, tackle, batter, search, arrest, detain, and imprison” him, for no legitimate reason.
The suit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court, names 10 officers, all unnamed, along with the NYPD and City of New York, and says that he was arrested despite repeatedly identifying himself “as a journalist” and offering “his professional credentials and identification.” It describes the arrest as “unconstitutional due to excessive force,” and that it involved an illegal search, unlawful detention, as well as deprivation of due process and freedom of the press.
According to the Courthouse News Service, Faraone says in the suit “that he was in a public space reporting on a matter of public interest.” After the Occupy movement was over in 2012, Faraone self-published a book called “99 Nights With the 99 Percent.”
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In a 2012 Globe interview about the Occupy movement in Boston and his book, Faraone said: “There were a lot of things I wrote about that people did not like. I would come downtown from JP on the last train and go back home on the first in the morning. When I did the overnights, I saw a lot of crap at the camps. Of course I’m sympathetic. I ate at the camp till I started getting sick. But as far as being too close to the movement, no.”
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