It was a dark enough story already when Fox News weekend anchor Gregg Jarrett got arrested for being drunken and belligerent at the Northern Lights Grill in the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport. (Think about how expensive those drinks were.) But now Gawker’s J.K. Trotter has obtained the raw airport-jailhouse footage from Jarrett’s detention using the Freedom of Information Act, and it makes the whole thing much bleaker. Jarrett, who can’t keep his mouth shut, gets manhandled.
“Really, you … had to … make me … do this?” he slurs at the officers. “You fucking … stupid … ass.” Jarrett then gets in the face of a particularly tough airport cop wearing a bike helmet, and allegedly grabs his left arm (although it’s not visible in the video). The officer responds by twisting Jarrett’s arm, slamming him into the wall, and then back onto a bench while ordering him to stop resisting. It’s pretty brutal, but would probably not be described by Jarrett’s employer as police brutality.
According to the incident report, Jarrett was fresh from rehab — he’d requested time off from Fox News for “personal reasons” — and had mixed medication with alcohol. He was released on $300 bond.
