Commendably so, no journalist was arrested, detained or assaulted by the police in the first six months of 2018 and during the election period and more-so during the election-related demonstrations that rocked Harare on 1 August 2018. However, one foreign journalist Joseph Cotterill, was shoved with a rifle butt by a member of the riot police when the police tried to block an MDC Alliance election-related press conference at a local hotel in Harare on 3 August 2018. The other three cases involved the assault of journalists by the military during the violent demonstrations in Harare on 1 August 2018. However, this changed during the post-election period in September. For instance, freelance journalist Columbus Mavhunga, was detained for close to three hours during a police crackdown on vendors in Harare on 16 September 2018. Mavhunga was detained after he refused to delete footage he had recorded of the police arresting vendors in the Central Business District (CBD). He endured a three-hour ordeal as the police officers drove around with him while they continued with their arrests of vendors. Mavhunga was only released after interventions by national police spokesperson, Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba. On 21 September 2018, the police briefly detained Pauline Chateuka for filming police officers as they arrested vendors around the Copacabana bus terminus in Harare. Police detained Chateuka despite the fact that she was visibly wearing her press card. According to Chateuka, once police officers noticed that she was using a video camera to record the events, one officer ran up to her and pushed her into a nearby police lorry with his rifle butt. She was released an estimated 10 minutes later with no charges laid against her In the meantime, Chateuka had been separated from her colleague Joseph Andras. Andras was accosted by riot police who demanded the deletion of footage from his cellphone. He refused to delete the footage arguing that he was a duly accredited journalist. Chateuka and Andras are reporters with Community Radio Harare, a local community radio initiative. In a similar incident, police officers briefly detained New Zimbabwe editor Gilbert Nyambavhu on 19 September 2018. Nyambavhu was taking pictures of the police during their raid on vendors in Harare. He was detained in the company of his colleague Idah Mhetu.