COPENHAGEN -- InvestigateWest photographer Christopher Crow was arrested today by police wielding batons and accompanied by police dogs. Crow had been photographing demonstrators trying to shut down Copenhagen's harbor outside the United Nations negotiations on climate change.
Crow was taken into custody along with about 275 others. Some 400 to 500 demonstrators had been involved in the protest.
Demonstrators marched roughly six blocks before riot police trapped the group against a metal railing about 2 1/2 miles from the harbor.
InvestigateWest’s second photographer, Mark Malijan, and videographer Blair Kelly and I made our way across the police line shortly before officers closed in with rubber batons and police dogs.
Riot cops violently tore protesters from a cargo truck that carried the march’s leaders. Police destroyed the cargo van’s makeshift walls while confiscating numerous metal fence-cutters. About a dozen witnesses told InvestigateWest that police officers initiated the struggle.
A crowd of about 200 observers watched as police continued to wrench protesters from the cluster. Officers sat demonstrators on thin foam mats before binding their wrists with plastic quick-ties. Most of the detained were youths in their teens and 20s.
Crow, 27, is a senior at Western Washington University in Bellingham, where he is majoring in humanities and international business. He is on assignment for InvestigateWest.
The remainder of the InvestigateWest team spotted Crow as a police bus carried the first group of detainees away. He was seated with protesters on the ground, where he waited for half an hour before being loaded on a bus and taken to an unknown location. The InvestigateWest team members pleaded unsuccessfully with police to release him.
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