Video: Riot Police, Percussion Grenades Conclude a Week of Protest in St. Paul

The Republican National Convention may have ended last week, but lost in the haze of John McCain's acceptance of the nomination was how the final day of the St. Paul protests was marked by a spike in arrests. Police rounded up nearly 400 demonstrators during and after a major protest march, and at least 19 journalists were also arrested--including two from the Associated Press and even a New York-based reporter with the GOP-friendly Fox News. He's just published an outraged account of the experience, and says police misled protesters by telling them to disperse over a bridge, only to block the other side and then arrest hundreds of them en masse.

A video leading up to the arrests that night depicts a chaotic scene, with the situation escalating at the 1:55 mark, once riot police start throwing percussion grenades directly at activists.

Sheriff Bob Fletcher explains to the Associated Press that "whoever got arrested was whoever didn't disperse and was still on the bridge. The tactic of blocking people on the bridge could very well have prevented a lot of activity later tonight. Clearly there were a number of people with no intention of being law-abiding tonight." That's why Fletcher, with his extraordinary ability to see into the future, makes the big bucks.

The AP estimates at least 800 arrests during the convention. New York-based journalist Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, has also published an account of her arrest during the convention, after she ran from the convention floor to intervene in the violent arrest of two of her producers. All three were were accredited, but Goodman claims that as she tried to explain that she was press, a Secret Service agent ripped her convention credential from her neck.