Police in the Twin Cities target and harrass political activists working on defense of RNC 8 today

[Bjorn Against]

While details are still emerging on the situation, it is clear that there was some serious police harrassment on an activist group working for the defense of the RNC 8 here in the Twin Cities today. I am going to be trying to learn more about what happened today as on Thursday I have a meeting with Ramsey County District Attorney Susan Gaertner in which I intend to let her know how I feel about the attempts by her office to intimidate and silence political protesters. I will be sure to write more about that meeting after it happens, but for now I just want to post the series of e-mails I received today which give all the details that are known to me at this time...

Re: Breaking: @ least 1 arrest on Tour de Fletcher
Presently numerous police vehicles hanging around Walker Church - @ least a paddy wagon and some squads. Nothing better to do apparently. RNC8 supporters having a nice lunch, police pretending to do serious jobs. Earlier They evidently picked off someone who was heading away from the bike fleet. (your tax dollars at work)

Coldsnap is working on bailing out the arrestee. Concern about what happens in Ramsey County?

st paul leg of ride cancelled, police still around Walker church after 1 arrest on Tour de Fletcher

Latest update:
We hear that Coldsnap has arranged for the bail for the one arrestee and they should be released in a couple hours.

At this time around a half dozen bike police, a van, a dubious looking dark sedan and a squad are around the Walker Church - your tax dollars at work.

The St Paul leg of the ride has been cancelled and folks are dispersing - hopefully there has not been a cross-jurisdictional task force convened (a la Critical Mass August 07) in order to deal with this top-level public safety 'threat' of some casual biking around town.

sidebar: if bicycles are such a big deal - unicycles could get the national guard involved! :-/

intelligence gathering? since the 'investigation is active' in status according to Mr Fletcher (reference the February search warrant @ Macalester College) then all the photos they have been gathering at this and other things are going into the active file, it would likely seem.

outlook appears to be the BS fizzling out for today -- fletcher is probably eatin donuts on the other side of the Marshall / Lake bridge, bummed there will be no one to chase (poorly) with the mobile field force.

Presently numerous police vehicles hanging around Walker Church - @ least a paddy wagon and some squads. Nothing better to do apparently. RNC8 supporters having a nice lunch, police pretending to do serious jobs. Earlier They evidently picked off someone who was heading away from the bike fleet. (your tax dollars at work)

Coldsnap is working on bailing out the arrestee. Concern about what happens in Ramsey County?

TONS of police @ Marshall bridge. Really. Indymedia team going now !!!

Final email update: all seems well for now, sorry for the email list barrage today!
Alright so Indymonkey Mobile Field Force discovered the bike cops had moved on from Marshall bridge.

Using our increasingly honed abilities to telepathically determine their likely activities & patterns, it was discovered that three St. Paul squads blockaded Iglehart & Chatsworth intersection next to Mike Whalen's house & neighbors said they'd been hanging around all day. (In all likelihood they were probably at the convergence center as well!) A pattern of absurd activity...

The arrestee has had his cash/keys/etc jacked by the fuzz until Monday and needs a place to stay tomorrow nite. offers of hospitality can be directed i believe to (name and e-mail deleted) . Additionally please note that the Coldsnap Hotline is messed up currently and someone is addressing that. (currently unclear what the hell happened to trigger arrest besides of course the need to look busy/bust someone)

Overall it was a rather hairy day -- having so many of Mpls/St Paul finest snooping around the church certainly cast an intense flashback vibe for me. Copwatch video ninjas were out in force and did an excellent job IDing all their players and methods of squandering taxpayer dollars while avoiding difficult tasks on a nice Saturday afternoon.

Sorry for the email barrage but that was the most intense mass scene in some time - and in fact can accurately be said to be part of the so-called "active investigation" AKA perpetual fishing expedition and photos etc being added to the intelligence files (and yes they were aggressively collecting). Therefore in a legal sense we could say that "the RNC is still happening" in scenes like today's!

(also this was clearly something like a "joint powers" or crossover type operation with both cities operating and different commanders roaming around in unmarked cars - which means that sticking up for the operation & expense has a unique political importance of sorts--as it's kind of part of the 'diplomatic relations' between cities' law enforcement & needs to be extra-justified.)

We were trailed most of the MPLS route by four bike cops, a couple squads, a booking van and an undercover - total overkill obviously for about 50 people (maybe a bit less) who all stopped at traffic lights! Then we got to the church for tasty lunch and filled our bellies so much that combined with a bit of lateness and a long day, those of us who were thinking about going to STP decided to call it off for now. Upon looking out the door we saw that the cops were all still waiting outside for us to depart again! Four cars including the downtown booking van were staged at a parking lot down the street, another across the street from Walker, another squad and 2 or 3 unmarked cars. One belonged to a St. Paul Police commander (Doyle), who walked over and questioned people about when or whether the STP ride was leaving or not.

After a while they began to slowly disperse, and then I got a call saying that 10 bike cops + 2 squads were staging on the STP side of the Lake Street bridge! So the indymedia crew of course had to go down and take a look. They were gone when we got there, but we went to Mike Whelan's house, where 6 cops in 3 cars + a likely undercover car + bikes on racks were on the street still waiting there! We took some film and they took film back. All in all I have to estimate there were at minimum 20-30 cops involved in this joint operation, obviously a gigantic waste of money and totally pointless. Minus the incident with Bill though, they didn't really do anything but hang around and look sad while we were having lots of fun and eating tasty food. I call it a win.

[Bjorn Against]

1. If you want to learn more about the RNC 8 here is the place to go...

http://rnc8.org/