SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — The Latest on the death of Nancy Reagan (all times local): 10 p.m. A longtime Los Angeles Times photographer was arrested for allegedly refusing to cooperate with police while transmitting photographs of the funeral motorcade of Nancy Reagan.
Deputy Chief David Livingstone of the Simi Valley police says officers were responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle about three-quarters of a mile downhill from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where the public viewing for the former first lady was being held.
Livingstone says the photographer, 65-year-old Ricardo DeAratanha, refused to identify himself and balked at providing identification, and was arrested for resisting and obstructing officers. But Mark Werksman, an attorney for the photographer, tells the LA Times that his client provided “multiple unassailable press credentials” and the officers “kept asking him for more ID.”
The attorney says the officers grew angry when DeAratanha suggested that his Brazilian ethnicity and tan skin was behind their questioning of him. Livingstone, the deputy chief, denied that race had anything to do with the encounter.
DeAratanha, who has been with the Times since 1989, was cited and released. He was treated at a hospital for a sprained elbow.