Phoenix police to probe detainment of Black Wall Street Journal reporter

By Char Adams, NBC News

The Wall Street Journal is urging Phoenix police to investigate after one of its Black reporters was handcuffed and detained while working on an assignment on the city’s north side. 

Phoenix police officials told NBC News on Thursday that the department has agreed to a probe after Editor-in-Chief Matt Murray wrote a letter dated Dec. 7 to Phoenix Police Chief Michael Sullivan “expressing concerns” regarding the incident. On Nov. 23, Dion Rabouin, who covers finance for the Wall Street Journal, was detained in a police car while conducting interviews outside a Chase Bank. An officer accused the reporter of trespassing and took him into custody. 

“We’re deeply concerned that Wall Street Journal reporter Dion Rabouin was detained, handcuffed and placed in the back of a police vehicle while reporting,” a Journal spokesperson said in a statement. “No journalist should ever be detained simply for exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Rabouin was interviewing passersby for a story about savings accounts when a pair of employees walked up to him, asked what he was doing and went back inside, he told ABC affiliate KNXV. He said the employees did not ask him to leave. Soon, Police Officer Caleb Zimmerman approached and told Rabouin he was trespassing, he said. 

Learn what happened next.

Racial profiling like this steals Black boyhood, and in the case of Trayvon Martin and victims of police violence, lives.

Read more stories like this.