Oakland settles with journalist for $9,500 over jaywalking ticket

The city of Oakland has agreed to pay $9,500 to an independent journalist known for documenting police misconduct who filed a lawsuit accusing officers of wrongfully detaining him and writing him a jaywalking ticket to deter him from his work.

The city agreed in closed session on Tuesday to settle the lawsuit filed by videographer Jacob Crawford, the founder of wecopwatch.org.

Crawford said he was given a “groundless” citation on July 19, 2013, for jaywalking on the 500 block of 14th Street after he took photos of Oakland police monitoring demonstrators at a downtown rally who were protesting the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. He had also asked for the officers’ names, Crawford said.

Sgt. Darrin Downum told Officer Melissa Baddie to write Crawford the citation, said the suit filed by attorney Rachel Lederman. Crawford was handcuffed for several minutes, the suit said, and the ticket was eventually dismissed in traffic court.

Lederman, whose firm represents plaintiffs in police misconduct litigation, hired Crawford three months after the incident as an investigator.

“Even if some of these tickets are technically legitimate, it’s actually being used as a way of gathering information on protesters, which is chilling to their free speech,” Lederman said Wednesday.

In court papers, attorneys for Oakland said Crawford was not wrongfully cited or retaliated against for his viewpoint.

“Mr. Crawford was cited for jaywalking on July 19, 2013, because he was jaywalking,” a deputy city attorney wrote in a memorandum.

The lawsuit had included allegations by another independent journalist, David Morse, who said that on Jan. 14, 2014, he and Crawford were riding their bicycles home from a demonstration — which never materialized — that had been called to protest the acquittal of two Fullerton (Orange County) police officers in the beating death of a homeless man.

Two Oakland officers gave each of them a citation for running a red light at San Pablo Avenue and Thomas L. Berkley Way, the suit said. Those tickets were also dismissed. Lederman said she decided not to pursue damages in that case.

Morse, a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, or Indybay, received $162,500 in 2012 to settle a lawsuit in which he claimed that UC Berkeley police had wrongfully arrested him and seized photos he took during a protest at the on-campus residence of then-Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.

Last year, Morse, who writes Internet stories under the pen name of Dave Id, lost a lawsuit in which he accused BART police of retaliating for his coverage when they arrested him and accused him of blocking a fare gate during a 2011 protest.

Henry K. Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: hlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @henryklee