Robert Stolarik, Julia C. Reinhart, John Bolger, Nathan Heustis, John Knefel, Jacob Roszak, Alisen Redmond, Judith Kim.

All of these journalists were doing their jobs on public sidewalks or streets when they were arrested or detained or harassed by police.

Two of them —Redmond and Kim — are scheduled to be tried in Atlanta City Court this Friday, Oct. 12, on misdemeanor “obstruction of traffic” charges. Both women are student journalists: Ms. Redmond at Kennesaw State University and Ms. Kim at Georgia State University.

Both were arrested last November while covering an Occupy Atlanta demonstration, apparently singled out by police while the two were taking photos and video of the protests alongside other journalists. They spent 14 hours in jail before being released.

SPJ, the National Press Photographers Association, the Student Press Law Center and others have sent letters to Atlanta officials condemning continued prosecution of this case and arguing that student journalists are no less journalists than those who work for the Atlanta Journal Constitution or CNN.

The arrest and lengthy detention of Redmond and Kim were outrageous enough, but to hold a dubious “obstruction of traffic” charge over their heads for nearly a year seems an abuse of prosecutorial privilege and authority.

Most of the other journalists I named above were arrested while covering the anniversary demonstrations of Occupy Wall Street in New York City in mid-September. You can read more about them in this Storify story. (Kudos to Josh Stearns of Free Press for all the works he’s done over the last year tracking these arrests.)

One — Stolarik, a New York Times photographer — was arrested in August in the Bronx while taking pictures of an arrest that was part of the NYPD’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” program. Charges of obstruction of governmental administration and resisting arrest remained lodged against Stolarik as of September 30, according to a letter to NYC Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly by NPPA general counsel Mickey Osterreicher.

The OWS anniversary arrests and the police assault on Stolarik indicate a ramped up police practice of preventing journalists from bearing public witness to public events — despite clear legal precedent that protects journalists who are observing and recording such events and despite an NYPD memo sent out after last year’s raid on Zucotti Park that reminded officers of the right of journalists to be present.

Although the NPPA and SPJ (through our local chapter, the New York Deadline Club) expressed dismay and concern over the NYPD’s actions against journalists last month, the groups extended an offer to Kelly to meet with him and his administrators “to improve police-press relations and to clarify the ability of credentialed and non-credentialed journalists to photograph and record on public streets without fear of intimidation and arrest,” as NPPA’s Osterreicher put it.

As of Oct. 10, NPPA and SPJ had not heard back from Kelly.