Fox 5 DC shooting raises more concerns about the safety of journalists in the US

WASHINGTON — A man was shot by police after kicking and intruding through two glass doors of the main entrance at the Fox 5 DC news station on Monday.

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George Odemns, 38, broke through two of the front doors of the news station in Friendship Heights and had a confrontation with the two officers in the lobby. One officer used pepper spray on Odemns and told him to back up. When he refused, the other officer shot him in the chest. Odemns was unarmed.

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The Metropolitan Police Department received a call about the shooting around 3 p.m. on Monday, said Cmdr. Melvin Gresham. Odemns was rushed to George Washington University Hospital. Gresham said that Odemns was responsive after being shot. Odemns has been charged with burglary following his breaking and entering.

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Gresham said he would not “divulge any information” about what Odemns said after forcibly entering the building. Fox 5 reporter Lindsay Watts tweeted that the officers in the lobby said that “[Odemns] didn’t say much.”

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According to a Fox 5 report, Odemns has previously been charged of murder, and police said Odemns has threatened Fox employees through e-mails. Karimah Bilal, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police Department, said that the investigation is still open while Odemns remains in custody.

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While the perimeter of the news station was blocked off by multiple police cars and caution tape, workers at a local business across the street watched the event occur. Skyler Nordstrom, a manager at Crunch Fitness, located directly across the street from the Fox 5 DC news station, was working the front desk when police cars began to arrive.

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“People always go in and out of that building, so I didn’t think there was anything suspicious,” Nordstrom said. “But when the first few cops started rolling up, they seemed more antsy than normal.”

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Gresham said that he has not experienced an event like this in his law enforcement career. However, potential violence against journalists is not a new phenomenon.

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The International News Safety Institute has compiled information about recent cases of violence against journalists in the United States.

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On August 2, 2007, Chauncey Bailey, editor-in-chief of the Oakland Post was shot on his way to work by a man angered by the paper’s coverage of his bakery. On August 26, 2015, two journalists in Virginia were killed during a live television broadcast by a former reporter. On June 28, an armed man shot and killed five journalists at the Capital Gazette in Maryland. Jarrod W. Ramos, the attacker, had previously sued the journalists for defamation.

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The recent violence against journalists has made the United States the second most dangerous country for journalists in the first half of 2018, said the International News Safety Institute.

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On Feb. 17, 2017, Trump tweeted that media is the “enemy of the American people.” At a rally in Montana on Thursday, Trump’s comments supported a Republican representative, Greg Gianforte, who physically assaulted a reporter in 2017.

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In August, two United Nations human rights experts, David Kaye, from the United Nations Human Rights Council, and Edison Lanza, from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said that Trump’s comments about journalism and media “undermine confidence in reporting” and endanger the lives of reporters.

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