Breitbart reporter Lee Stranahan on Saturday night found himself housed in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison’s general population after getting arrested while covering ongoing protests after Alton Sterling’s death.
But, as Politico reports, Stranahan, who has worked for the conservative outlet since 2010, says today that his arrest is symptomatic of a larger problem with the city’s Democratic mayor and Louisiana’s Democratic governor, rather than blaming the police for arresting him.
Stranahan was one of at least three journalists arrested during the protests, including a reporter for New Orleans’ NPR affiliate and an assistant news director for WAFB-TV.
“You know, obviously, anybody who’s heard me on the show or reads my work knows that there’s nobody who’s a more strident supporter of law enforcement or critic of Black Lives Matter than I am,” Stranahan explained on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily, discussing his work on an upcoming documentary.
In the days after police shot and killed 37-year-old Alton Sterling outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Stranahan saids there had been relatively little unrest until after the Dallas shooting, when “police showed up in full riot gear with long guns.”
“And I gotta point out that at no point was anything ever explained to the protesters. At no point did anyone from leadership come out and talk to the protesters. And when we talk about the police here, I just want to be very clear on something—this is not individual police officers I’m talking about, because these guys didn’t decide on a Friday night, ‘Hey let’s just show up with long guns,’” Stranahan said. “They’re ordered by people, and the Baton Rouge police have been getting horrible orders. Stand down was an order. Show up in full force and don’t explain anything is an order, it’s a policy. And this is a state that’s run by a Democrat governor, and it’s a city that’s run by a black Democrat mayor. OK? So that’s what the power structure here is. And they’ve been horrible.”
Politico has the full story.
