Who is Omar Jimenez, the CNN Reporter Arrested Live on Air by Minneapolis Police?

CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and at least two crew members were arrested during a live broadcast on Friday during which the team was covering protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Jimenez is a CNN correspondent based in Chicago. He has been reporting for the network since 2017, covering breaking news for CNN Newsource, the network's affiliate content provider based in Washington, D.C. He has reported breaking news stories for more than 900 CNN affiliates in the U.S., France and Mexico.

Some of his work for CNN Newsource include reporting from Florida and Texas during the 2017 hurricanes, which formed part of CNN's Emmy-nominated coverage, on the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2018 and from Paris following the Notre Dame Cathedral fire in 2019.

Before joining CNN, Jimenez was a reporter and anchor for WBAL-TV in Baltimore where he received an individual Emmy nomination for his general assignment reporting.

Some of his work while at WBAL-TV included reporting on the trials for the officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, which was the lead story on the station's Emmy award-winning special on opioids. Jimenez has also worked as a multimedia journalist for WGEM- TV in Quincy, Illinois, where he launched his on-air broadcast career.

He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he also played on the varsity men's basketball team.

During a live broadcast for CNN on Friday, Jimenez was seen speaking with state patrol officers and identified himself and his crew as journalists. Jimenez told the officers his crew would be willing to relocate if their location was an issue.

After he resumed reporting, a state patrol officer told him he was under arrest.

CNN demanded the release of Jimenez and the other crew members who were arrested on Friday, noting the arrests were a "clear violation" of journalists' First Amendment rights.

"A CNN reporter & his production team were arrested this morning in Minneapolis for doing their jobs, despite identifying themselves-a clear violation of their First Amendment rights. The authorities in Minnesota, incl. the Governor, must release the 3 CNN employees immediately," CNN said in a statement posted on its official Twitter account.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has apologized to CNN for the "totally unacceptable" arrest of Jimenez and his crew.

Walz said he accepted full responsibility for the incident and would be ordering the immediate release of the reporting team. The governor said Jimenez and his team clearly had the right to report on the protests, according to CNN.

The experience of Josh Campbell, a white journalist reporting from the same area in which Jimenez was located, was said to have had been the "opposite" of Jimenez's, with the journalist being able to cover the same story after identifying himself as a reporter, Campbell told CNN's New Day.