(December 11, 2005) – Three photojournalists were arrested Saturday, along with more than twenty protesters and marchers, at a neo-Nazi rally in Toledo, OH.
Jeffrey Sauger, Jeff Willis, and Jim West found themselves in police custody while covering the story. The National Socialist Movement held an hour-long rally at the downtown Government Center, where a row of police in riot gear and mounted on horses, rows of barriers, and a median with trees separated observers and protesters from the 63 neo-Nazis, The Toledo Blade reported today. The rally was on Jackson Street at the Government Center, and the street had been closed in advance for the rally between Erie and Huron Streets.
Police presence was especially heavy at this rally after the last appearance by less than two dozen neo-Nazis in North Toledo on October 15 ended in a riot, with injuries and arrests, when police tried to cancel the event and lost control of the crowd. In that riot, Toldeo Blade photojournalist Allan Detrich was attacked and injured and had to use one of his cameras to defend himself (See News Photographer magazine, November 2005, page 34.)
This time, with more than 60 neo-Nazis at Saturday’s rally, there were police snipers posted on the tops of nearby buildings, air surveillance flying overhead, police in riot gear with visors and shields and mounted on horseback, and squads of back-up police stationed in a nearby parking garage, The Blade said.
Jeffrey Sauger, a freelance photojournalist from Royal Oak, MI, and an NPPA member since 1990, told News Photographer magazine that he was arrested for “criminal trespass” while in the “media pit” (an area set aside for journalists) that was within the boundaries of a cordoned off area that police had specifically set up for the rally and counter-protesters.
The photojournalists were arrested “for crossing police lines,” according to today’s story in The Blade, and that Jeff Willis, a Toledo Journal photographer, was the first to be arrested – even before the rally started. Also arrested was freelance photojournalist Jim West, a newspaper and magazine editorial photographer based in Detroit for more than two decades.
Sauger said, “I did not have the ‘temporary media pass’ as I was told by officers that I could not get one by the time I had arrived to cover the event for EPA (European Pressphoto Agency). I had already been in and out of the ‘media pit’ several times w/out incident. When I first arrived I asked a couple of different officers about being told that I could no longer get a pass and that others had said it was no problem. All of the area concerned was on a public street.”
“After the neo-Nazis finally appeared, I went back into the pit to check that angle. I didn't even get a frame off and was tapped on the shoulder and chest by one of several officers who handled me before I was put in handcuffs and walked to the police station. I was asked for my media pass, stated I didn't have one, and before any discussion took place, or even an attempt to find out who I was, I was whisked off from the scene.”
West told News Photographer magazine that he was covering the rally on assignment for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Before the neo-Nazis appeared, there was a group of several dozen protesters chanting and waving signs in the designated protest area. Police on horseback were frequently riding through the area in a manner that I thought was dangerous and provocative. Several of the horses were not in very good control, apparently spooked by the noise and sign waving from the protesters,” he said.
“One (horse) in particular was out of control, jumping sideways and endangering everyone nearby. So I was trying to photograph the police on horseback and the protesters in the same frame when I was grabbed and charged with ‘failure to disperse.’”
Sauger said police released the three photojournalists after about four hours. “Our court date is Monday.” They are scheduled to appear in Toledo Municipal Court along with the others who were arrested at the rally.
Sauger, a graduate of Central Michigan University with a journalism degree, worked as a newspaper photographer for more than ten years before returning to college in 1998 to earn a masters degree in visual communication from Ohio University in Athens. Since then he has worked as a freelancer doing editorial and corporate work. He was the Michigan Press Photographers Association’s Photographer of the Year in 2000.
With the support of Blue Earth Alliance, Sauger has continued a project he started while at OU documenting black American farmers who have been losing their land and going out of business at a rate three times higher than the national average. Another project he shot was following an Iraqi family back to Iraq, and he’s been shooting national advertising campaigns for the American Heart Association and the Professional Bowlers Association.
