[Infowarrior] - Massive raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

[Richard Forno]

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of  
highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving  
teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons  
drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests,  
handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law  
enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals,  
and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police  
department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed,  
photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue  
to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire  
code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department  
sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where  
suspected protesters were staying.

Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one  
which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being  
raided. Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie  
house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal  
setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any  
problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with  
"peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening  
and friendly. Posted below is the video of the scene, including  
various interviews, which convey a very clear sense of what is  
actually going on here.

In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a  
team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and  
black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them  
to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to  
move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the  
very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were  
forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took  
away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political  
materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house,  
an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described  
how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such  
as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in  
handcuffs. The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though  
they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest  
against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to  
raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so.

Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce  
Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National  
Lawyers' Guild. Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting  
of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this  
morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which  
he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group. There  
was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place,  
Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature,  
and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in  
any unauthorized protests.

Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were  
handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and  
charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is  
"conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in  
Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that  
statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self- 
evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who  
are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly  
unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until  
now), its constitutionality had not been tested.

There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities  
here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those  
who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the  
site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on  
behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that  
funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing  
anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive  
preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order  
altogether. Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT  
teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more  
than planning dissident political protests at a political convention  
and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as  
redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/