No charges for Denver police officer who detained reporter taking photos

A Denver police officer who handcuffed a reporter and placed her in his patrol car for taking pictures of a police stop will not face charges.

A spokesman for Denver District Attorney Beth McCann on Thursday said the reporter, Denver Independent editor Susan Greene, had been notified that insufficient evidence had been found to charge Officer James Brooks with a crime, according to The Associated Press.

{mosads}Greene reported in July that she had been arrested by Brooks after attempting to film several officers standing around a naked man sitting on the sidewalk.

“As it turns out, Officer Brooks didn’t like having his picture taken,” Green wrote at the time. “After accusing me of blocking the door of an ambulance that had been called to the scene – toward which he had prodded me during our encounter – and saying something about me obstructing officers, he grabbed me and twisted my arm in ways that arms aren’t supposed to move.”

“I wasn’t resisting,” she added. “Not even close.”

Despite her protests, as well as a Colorado law protecting a journalist’s right to film public safety officers, Greene says she was escorted by Brooks or another officer into a squad car.

“I’ve been wondering since then what would have happened if I weren’t white or a journalist, or if I hadn’t mentioned those pesky ‘public sidewalk’ and First Amendment details, or if this hadn’t gone down in broad daylight, right across the street from the state Capitol, and within view of body cameras, halo cameras and onlookers,” she wrote in the July column.

Denver’s police department launched an internal investigation in the days following the report, which was picked up by a number of local Colorado media outlets. The status of that investigation is unclear, according to the AP.