Minneapolis/St. Paul police arresting civilians, journalists, lawyers

[rax]

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised by this, but I am; maybe I shouldn't be angry about this, but I am. I was pointed to this thanks to fjm , but have done a bunch more research, and am assembling it with my analysis for your convenience. The sound bite is that St. Paul police, working in concert with county police and the FBI, raided a number of homes and at least one rented meeting site yesterday looking for specific individuals they believed were conspiring to riot. The first report I saw was this one, on salon.com, by Gleen Greenwald, who has written books critical of the Bush administration. There are two interesting video interviews there, as well as a pretty good (though arguably biased, I guess) summary of events. He links to this blog post by a member of I-Witness news, a group who videotapes police actions to help demonstrate when protesters are arrested on false grounds by police officers lying under oath. (More common than you'd think.) A house full of journalists was put under house arrest for a number of hours, according to the various blog sources, without a warrant.

While most mainstream media coverage is hardly exciting (the Chicago Tribune glossed like whoah, CNN elides a lot of details but does take a decently positive view of activists, the NYT doesn't seem to cover it at all: EDIT: eredien  found the coverage here), the Minneapolis Star-Tribune presents this article, including a St. Paul city councilman being pissed off and a wonderful photo of a laywer who was arrested outside one of the houses handcuffed on the steps. The Wired blog has a list of all of the searched-for-and-seized items, which does suggest to me that at least one of the groups was actually planning violent or semi-violent resistance. This makes the issue not cut and dry, and I address that in a couple of paragraphs, but I do encourage you to take a look at the list and see how many of those items you don't have in your home. (For me, the answer is either four or five, and that's not counting the downstairs apartment, though I doubt they are stockpiling urine.)

The National Lawyers Guild is one of the groups seeking action against the police, though how successful they will be is dubious, especially since the largest planned protest is tomorrow, and there are unlikely to be any courts in session before then. Even if they are successful, though,  it looks like this sort of thing may become more common: there's apparently a new FBI plan in the works to make warrants unnecessary for investigation of American citizens. Internet sources I don't trust enough to link to say they may already be doing this; normally I dismiss that sort of thing as paranoid speculation but, uh, the FBI was involved in these raids and pretty clearly did not have warrants at all the houses. So now I'm less sure.

I have mixed feelings on the wisdom and usefulness of protesting things like the RNC (or DNC: that convention was not without incident); even when protesting peacably, who is being reached? I think political speech is crucial but I often fear that such efforts are just bitching to the kennel and further entrench ill will between authority figures and protesters and, by extension, people on the political fringes like me. (Hi, I'm a queer vegan bicyclist!) However, there is a huge difference between peacable protesters and authority figures: Authority figures are invested by the state with power and authority. When they use this power to achieve control of situations, there is a fundamental imbalance of power that makes political speech problematic, and in the events I've described above, I think that [ab?]use of that power has sunk to the level of making considering political speech problematic. They made me read books about why that was a bad idea in high school; they involved rats.

I expect that at least one of these raids actually culminated in seizing material that would have been used to stop buses, blockade streets, and/or aid violent resistance of police action. I personally don't find those actions to be productive forms of political speech in an environment where other forms of political speech, including but not limited to nonviolent protest, are available. I think that police action to stop those violent protest activities is justified in a vacuum, but becomes hugely problematic when it also silences non-violent protest action by violent means. In fact, one of the biggest problems I have with violent protest is that it, too, effectively silences non-violent protest by taking the lion's share of media coverage and popular attention. In this case, the violent acts by authority figures have now shaped my understanding of the situation in terms of police action, not in terms of whatever the people in question might have been protesting, and that makes me sad and angry.

If this had happened a week ago instead of yesterday, I might be on a plane to Minneapolis right now. As it stands, that's not feasible, but Minneapolis is no longer on my list of cities in which I would be willing to live. (See also their reaction to Critical Mass in August 2007; Critical Mass has its problems, but if you watch video of the event, I expect you'll find the police behavior to be at best problematic.) I've had interactions with police in the past and while I don't feel like I was necessarily treated with the respect I deserved, I don't really have that much to complain about. No one has ever broken into my house with a submachine gun trained on me. I have absolutely no idea how I would handle that; I don't think it's an experience anyone should ever have to have. I especially think it's important not to allow those we grant authority as part of a social contract to use their power to control political discourse.

I encourage you to disseminate this information, as I've written it or otherwise; if anyone has any ideas for how to contribute productively to making this not happen in the future, I'd love to add those ideas here. Thank you for reading.

Comments

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

For what it is worth, it actually IS legal to arrest someone without a warrant--particularly house arrest, which is usually done when you think someone SHOULD be arrested and are holding them for the purpose of sending your partner to go obtain a warrant. It is generally considered 'detainment.'

Also, the NLG? Kinda known among lawyers as being the whacko commie lawyer group. I would be inclined to see if the ACLU or the ACS gets involved in the next few days--they are organizations that are less considered to be fringe organizations.

If there were machine guns involved in this arrest, though, they may have a case for excessive force. I am also curious whether or not they knocked, which, believe it or not, is a requirement for that kind of arrest.

[rax.livejournal.com]

This is one of the eight thousand reasons knowing you is useful :) None of the records I've found are clear on whether or not they knocked; I expect that they did on the grounds that they are likely to know the law. In this case, though, I am not sure that being strictly legal makes it OK with me. Thank you for the information!

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

You also don't really have to wait that long after you knock to come barging in--you can knock, wait like three seconds, and then break down the door and it's considered a legal entry. But, you know, you have to make at least a TOKEN effort to announce your presence first...

[rax.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's "thrilling." So if it takes me too long to get down from the third floor, there could be a cop coming up the stairs with a drawn gun?

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

Well depends upon why the cop was there, but yeah, potentially. You'd still have the potential issue of excessive force, and also generally a short time like that is only considered sufficient when you have reason to believe the suspect is dangerous, or the delay may lead to destroyed evidence.

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

Ok, I have looked at some of the links you have provided. The main thing I see as a potential issue, beyond the potential excessive force issue (which, from what I can tell, may go either way), is: How did they know to go to THOSE houses? What was their probable cause?

I also want to know HOW they got inside? Did the people there just let them in? Tell them they could look around? When you give the police consent it is basically a carte blanche--these people would have known that, almost certainly. So that means something incriminating would have had to be in plain view in order to permit the officers to legally search the rest of the place. I'm also not convinced that something like a laptop can be legally seized as evidence, although I would need to read caselaw on that--conspiracy to riot is a pretty obscure charge.

[rax.livejournal.com]

In one case, the house was being used explicitly as a protest group space. That one was obvious. The targeting on the others is unclear; as best I can tell as not a laywer and not there, they were attempting to find specific people who were couchsurfing. Here's the first page of one warrant (http://twincities.indymedia.org/rnc/warrant1.jpg) with the others available by incrementing the 1.

I unfortunately don't have information about how they got inside. The I-Witness people obviously refused to let them inside; I have read that a battering ram was involved and I think that's in one of the links above. (At that point they did have a warrant, according to that source.) I think that the conspiracy was thought to have happened online and thus seizing all the computers.

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

Ok last comment I swear! Apparently the people in the house locked all the doors, and the police officers went off to get a search warrant in response. If they did get into the house to search it until AFTER the warrant had been obtained, then I don't think anything about the search was illegal.

Also, as much as I hate to say it, I'm not actually sure the police did anything wrong here. Locking all the doors in response to police presence is a pretty extreme and incriminating response, and I bet those police had absolutely NO IDEA what they were going to find in there. As much as it galls me to admit it, a lot of extreme liberal organizations are, well, very extreme, and it was totally within the realm of possibility at that point that they may have found very dangerous materials inside.

Also, I am forced to note that if they really DID find caltrops for the buses carting people in, that had the potential to hurt a lot of people, depending on what they were planning to do--if they didn't want drivers to see them, and were hoping to cause one or more buses' tires to suddenly flat out, that could have caused the buses to crash into the sidewalk, a telephone pole, each other... admittedly it is more likely they were intending to simply lay the caltrops out way ahead of time, so that the drivers would see them, to impede progress, but we don't actually know what was intended (and the internet assures me that historically caltrops have been used both ways). All of this is completely ignoring accounts of materials for bombs, of course, because I tend to be dubious of such things--but again, for all I know, it could be accurately reported.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, feel free to comment!

Part of what confuses this is that there were five raids and I don't know which is which. The house that locked the doors was I believe, empty of caltrops but full of video equipment; it's possible the place with the caltrops also locked all of the doors, I don't know. To a certain extent I don't know if we will find out for a while or at all, and that troubles me too. If it's not clear, I'm against the use of caltrops.

Here's my question: If locking the doors in response to police presence is extreme and incriminating, and giving consent is "basically a carte blanche," how are you actually supposed to respond? Is there an appropriate set of code words for "No, you may not enter my domicile, but you don't need to raid me?" That's part of what concerns me; it sounded like, from video accounts, at least one house just let them in and at least one barricaded themselves, and they basically got the same reaction.

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

Yeah I got confused by that too; for some reason I thought the locked door house and the caltrop house were the same house (I think, because they were both mentioned in the same article and it was unclear).

I definitely think there are responses that are somewhere between, "Yes, come in and feel free to search all you want" and locking every single entrance to your domicile. If you say, "No, I will not let you in until I see evidence of a warrant," for example, but do not run to every potential entrance to the door and lock it, I would see that as a middle-of-the-road approach. Also if you let a police officer into your foyer and explicitly say, "I have not given you permission to go beyond this point," you have not given consent to search (I THINK; I would need to look into that further).

Also, again, it's a "totality of the circumstances" kind of thing for almost every aspect of a search and seizure incident; a lot depends upon how many police there are; what time of day it is; how dangerous the police think you are; what the potential charge is; etc. Doing something like locking every door in your house contributes to the scenario not necessarily because it is extreme in and of itself; it also tells the police that you are more likely to fight them when they do gain entrance, and that you have a pretty strong distrust of police. Depending on how many police there are, how many people inside the house there are, what the charge is, and whether the police are armed, that may be enough to make the average policemen genuinely fearful for his or her safety. Also, keep in mind that the police generally HATE making arrests in people's houses because it is so much less safe, both legally and physically, than arresting them in public. It's why you see so many arrests out of cars--they are generally safer on pretty much every axis.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

that you have a pretty strong distrust of police.

Being a cynical type with just a smattering of history, I have to say that I consider all distrust of the police justified. I'm not saying that everyone should distrust the police, but if someone does distrust the police, there is absolutely no reason to consider it unjustified. From the progressive-activist standpoint, the police have a terrible track record and I can't think less of anyone for considering them nothing but a bunch of brutal-but-legalized thugs.

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

I think whether or not mistrust of the police is justified may be a separate issue from the totality-of-the-circumstances tally. In many places, the police act illegally on a routine basis, and this makes mistrust completely logical, but your actions still inform the legality of the police's actions at least to some extent.

it were a knee-jerk cynical snarl

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

I think whether or not mistrust of the police is justified may be a separate issue from the totality-of-the-circumstances tally. In many places, the police act illegally on a routine basis, and this makes mistrust completely logical, but your actions still inform the legality of the police's actions at least to some extent.

I agree with you on this: trusting the police is different from whether or not their actions are letter-of-the-law legal. To clarify: I was riffing on the one slice of the comment, and not arguing with the main thrust of your point.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to confuse right of entry rules as they apply to police and, in contrast, as they apply to vampires here. If you invite them in then they can eat you?

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Caltrops are useful mainly against horses (that's what they were invented for.)

As in police horses. And politics be damned, anyone who deploys caltrops against horses deserves a painful death.

[rax.livejournal.com]

From the "RNC Welcoming Committee" site they were designed to be deployed
against buses, not that that's really any better. (I expect you can devise
caltrops that are useful against buses, but I have no idea if these people
were successful.)

[twitch124.livejournal.com]

Activists have been using caltrops against logging trucks in the northwest since the 80s. Most environmental activist organizations are officially opposed to their use, but caltrops are easy to make once you've seen a picture of them on the news.

Caltrops freak me out, both the traditional kind and the strings of them that the US military and some local police forces use for perimeter control.

[maekern.livejournal.com]

Semi-auto AR-15s != "machine guns"

I still think the behavior of police forces in this case (in my home town!) is not acceptable, but I don't want inaccuracy to add possible future gun-phobia into the mix of issues.

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that! One of the articles mentioned "automatic weapons" and I think I misread. =(

[maekern.livejournal.com]

It's ok. It's easy enough to do, and most media outlets don't make it any easier to keep things straight.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I've always been of the opinion that being afraid of a gun pointed at you
is rational, not a phobia, no matter what type of gun it is. I wouldn't be
afraid of a gun sitting out on a table, aside from the fear that I would
pick it up and accidentally discharge it, but when a SWAT team is pointing it
at me, I reserve the right to be terrified, no matter how many bullets it
can fire per second, as long as that number is greater than zero.

[maekern.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. I only made the point because a lot of terms like "machine gun" get misused a lot, and muddy the waters in discussions of gun laws and other related issues. Cops storming the houses of citizens without warrants and waving ANY kind of guns in their faces is a rather big deal, but I didn't want people to hear about the topic and come away from it also thinking "woah, minneapolis cops have machine guns!"

NYT Coverage

[eredien]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/politics/30arrests.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/politics/30billboard.html?ref=politics

Re: NYT Coverage

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I added the top one to the main article and am reading the other one now.

[maekern.livejournal.com]

I've been rather horrified by all of this happening right on my doorstep.

Re: the critical mass attacks, most people seem to dismiss the whole issue by saying "The protesters were being jerks". This horrifies me, because this city seems to largely miss the point that it was a peaceful, non violent protest that happened to be irritating and inconvenient.

The Minneapolis Police Department also brought up some people cosplaying as zombies downtown on charges of terrorism.

[q10.livejournal.com]

i'm always suspicious of these kinds of raids, but i'm still seeing radically divergent accounts (http://volokh.com/posts/1220218012.shtml) of what was going on, so although i'm unnerved by the behavior of the police i'm a little hesitant to pass judgment until the dust settles and some actual facts emerge.

i'm also not sure what the list of searched and seized items shows. there are plenty of non-incriminating, legal, useful items that the police are still with in their rights to search for and seize (with a warrant, at least) if there's probable cause to think that the people or premises being searched are involved in putting those items to illegal uses. (to pick a simple example, in most places in the U.S. i'm permitted, subject to certain regulations, to keep a firearm in my residence, but, assuming i have a completely legal firearm, if i'm a suspect in a shooting then the state is pretty clearly within its rights to search for and seize said firearm to do some basic forensic stuff with it.)

that said, this does appear pretty creepy.

[rax.livejournal.com]

It looks to me from reports like one of the houses (likely the rented-out building that was initially a theater) was where the actual violent protest preparations were happening. Whether the other four houses of people were planning to participate in that violent protest or not is not entirely clear; I've seen video of people saying they weren't but that's not necessarily something to take at face value.

It's certainly true that legitimate objects can be used in illegitimate ways, from guns to nailguns to nails. My point about that list is that I live in a house full of twentysomethings and own most of the things on the list and am the sort of person who might have been planning to go to a nonviolent protest. I don't actually know this know this, because I'm not there, but I doubt the I-Witness people were involved with the caltrops people. It's hard to figure out what's going on because reports don't tend to keep the five raids as distinct occurrences for the most part.

One of the things that disturbs me the most, even assuming that all of the people in the houses were planning violent protest, is the way journalists and lawyers were allegedly treated. Admittedly, one of the interviewed lawyers was a little out there, but still... it makes me very nervous.

Thanks for the alternate account, though. It's interesting what details different people leave out when they tell the story.

[q10.livejournal.com]

my point on the objects thing was that ‘list of items to be seized’ isn't at all the same as ‘list of items to be taken as sufficient evidence of wrongdoing’ - this somewhat reduces the relevance of the fact that you and i both have a lot of those items in our residences.

as for the other bit, lawyers and journalists can engage in illegal conspiracies as well as anybody else, and if they are in fact at the location of conspiratorial activities it is at least understandable that they might spend a few hours swept up in a general raid. of course, this is based on the police claims that all the locations were (or were reasonably believed to be) involved in the relevant evil schemes, and those claims should be regarded with extreme suspicion, but being a journalist or a lawyer by itself shouldn't be some magic exemption (especially not if one isn't held for much longer than it would take to double-check the veracity of one's claims to be there for legitimate journalist or lawyer reasons).