Joe Miller’s Guards Handcuff And Detain Journalist

Security guards for Alaska’s GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller, who doesn’t want journalists asking questions about his past, handcuffed and detained Tony Hopfinger of the political blog Alaska Dispatch when Hopfinger tried to interview Miller.
(h/t Political Wire)

Hopfinger, who was holding a small video camera, said he was attempting to draw out a statement from Miller on why he was disciplined by the Fairbanks North Star Borough when Miller worked there as a part-time attorney.

So much for freedom of the press. As the Anchorage Daily News reports:

One of the guards grabbed Hopfinger’s video camera. Later, Hopfinger said that when he got the camera back, the segment covering the span of the arrest was missing. An Anchorage police officer offered to take the camera into custody and have it examined in the crime lab to investigate whether evidence had been destroyed, but Hopfinger declined. He said he needed the camera and the remaining video for his work.

The guard who grabbed the camera said Hopfinger had dropped it in the scuffle and denied erasing anything. The guard wouldn’t give his name.

While Hopfinger was still in handcuffs, the guards attempted to prevent other reporters from talking to him and threatened them too with arrest for trespass.

Hopfinger was freed after Anchorage police arrived and told the guards to release him.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.