Members of The Deadline Club’s governing board met recently with New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and his chief spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, to discuss relations between the city’s 35,000 uniformed police officers and the working press. In a wide ranging, 90-minute conversation, they discussed the arrests of journalists during the coverage of Occupy Wall Street, the training and instruction received by police officers on working with reporters, and the department’s public information policies and press credentialing process. The meeting at NYPD headquarters was requested by The Deadline Club, the New York City chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, to address lingering tensions since the arrests of journalists when protesters were cleared from New York’s Zuccotti Park last fall. Board members in attendance included President J. Alex Tarquinio, Assistant Treasurer Colin DeVries, and Executive Council Members Howard Goldberg and Mark J. Prendergast. The Deadline Club delegation impressed upon the commissioner that our goal was to ensure that journalists have access to cover and bear witness to all events in the city’s public space, especially when they involve constitutionally protected First Amendment activities such as the right to assembly and the right to free speech. That particularly applies when

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