Results tagged “minneapolis”

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.

The Post has a funny editorial today about how St. Paul police could have avoided all "the ugliness that's marred the GOP convention this week" by taking some tips from the NYPD's "effective" management of the 2004 RNC protests. Of course, St. Paul officials did consult with the NYPD before the convention, and their raids on protesters' homes seem partly inspired by the NYPD's pre-convention spying in 2004. But according to the Post, demonstrators in St. Paul are now "pining for the apparently gentler tactics of the NYPD."

No surprises here; more reports of heavy-handed police tactics are filtering in from the Twin Cities, where the NYPD has been consulting with local law enforcement on how to handle demonstrations during the Republican convention. Salon has a long story on police and federal officers ("in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn") raiding houses where protest organizers are suspected of staying, in some cases seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets.

With activists and citizen journalists pouring into Minneapolis in advance of the Republican National Convention (which starts September 1st), police there are already getting warmed up for what's sure to be another full-frontal assault on the bill of rights – which won't surprise anyone who protested the GOP's last convention in New York City.