By Carlos Miller
St. Paul police continued trampling over the U.S. Constitution as they conducted more mass arrests of peaceful protesters, photographers, videographers and journalists, including two reporters from the ultra-right wing Fox News.
The fracas started after police ordered several hundred people who had gathered at the Minnesota state Capitol for a protest march to disperse at 5 p.m. when their permit expired.
However, protesters claim that they originally had the permit until 7 p.m. and it somehow got changed on them.
Nevertheless, police used tear gas and flash bombs to herd the protesters and journalists onto a bridge, where 250 people ended up getting arrested.
One videographer said police tore his goggles off and sprayed pepper spray into his eyes.
Misael Ivan Lopez, 20, of Minneapolis, said he was documenting the action on his video camera, got caught in the middle of a chaotic crowd targeted by police using pepper spray on University Ave.
“I put myself on the ground and went fetal, but a guy just bent my head out to the side, tore my goggles off and sprayed me,” said Lopez, as he sat on the ground, rocking back and forth while a few march volunteers tended to him.
Police also handcuffed John P. Wise and Alice Kalthoff from the Dallas Fox News affiliated station, releasing Kalthoff after 30 minutes but hauling Wise off to jail.
Kalthoff reported that many other journalists were hauled off to jail as well.
The ACLU has also gotten involved, which played a prominent role in the $2 million settlement New York City had to dish out after numerous unlawful arrests during the 2000 Republican National Convention.
By Carlos Miller
It is getting to be very clear that St. Paul police are deliberately arresting people for exercising their First Amendment rights, whether it be protesting, documenting the protests or simply going about their business near the protests.
Even as three University of Kentucky journalists were released from jail on Wednesday, at least three other journalists, including a blogger from California, are still in custody, according to the ACLU, who is demanding investigations into the mass arrests.
St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington has defended his officers by insinuating that all the people arrested, including the multitude of journalists, were breaking the law.
“If a reporter is committing crimes while they’re under their credentials,” Harrington added, “I think they become regular citizens.”
However, a significant number of people arrested on felony charges - including the three UK journalists - have already had their cases dropped by the County Attorney’s Office, making it obvious that police are detaining people illegally - not to mention spraying them with pepper spray and tear gas - as a way to flaunt their power and get them off the streets.
“I think some of the police on the street have been very aggressive physically,” said Charles Samuelson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota. “The phrase is ’spoiling for a fight.’”
The dispute over how police handled the protests will likely be played out in Ramsey County District Court over many months. Of 71 felony cases brought by the police this week to the county attorney’s office, 27 cases, or 38 percent, have been dismissed outright.
This year’s republican national convention appears to be following in the steps of the 2004 convention, which resulted in the City of New York dishing out $2 million in settlement fees after the ACLU protested against the numerous false arrests.
The ACLU is also protesting the arrest of ABC reporter Asa Eslocker, whose arrest during the Democratic National Convention in Denver was caught on video.
Meanwhile, charges against three Democracy Now! reporters have yet to be dropped, so please join the “Call to Action” on their behalf.
Check out the following three videos where the three Democracy Now! reporters discuss their arrests.
By Carlos Miller
As media organizations protested the arrest of four journalists who were released on Monday, three other journalists remained in a St. Paul jail without hardly a word of support.
Hopefully, that will change today.
The journalists are from the University of Kentucky and include journalism students Ed Matthews and Britney McIntosh as well as Jim Winn, photo adviser to the university newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel.
All three are facing felony riot charges, which could land them in jail for up to a year.
They will be charged no later than Wednesday, said jail officials. If convicted, Winn, Matthews and McIntosh would receive a minimum sentence of one year in jail and have to pay a minimum fine of $3,000.
The three had credentials but that did not stop police from treating them like criminals, according to the following phrase on the Kernel, which has since been removed from the article.
Jim Winn was brought to the ground at gunpoint, Carla Winn said, while McIntosh walked around with her hands up in the air and Matthews was sprayed with pepper spray.
Ironically, Matthews was captured in the above photo being drenched with pepper spray, which was taken by Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke, who was also arrested on Monday after he photographed the following photo of a cop pushing a protester’s face to the cement with his knee.
Rourke, along with Democracy Now! journalists Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were released Monday night, hours after they were arrested with full journalism credentials.
All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar’s violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, “I’m Press! Press!,” resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman’s arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.
Salazar ended up filming her own arrest in the following video, where police in riot gear arrest and knock down any civilian in their way.
By Carlos Miller
In what has been the most violent clash between police and protesters at the Republican National Convention, police ended up arresting four journalists trying to document the altercations.
The arrests include AP photographer Matt Rourke, who was held on a “gross misdemeanor riot charge” and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, who was charged with obstruction.
Goodman was arrested after she tried to intervene on the arrest of two Democracy Now! producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, who were charged with “conspiracy to riot”.
The video of Goodman’s arrest, posted below, received more than 60,000 views within hours after it was posted on Youtube Monday.
Before he was arrested, Rourke shot some of the most compelling photos that have been posted of the protest so far, including one photo where protesters have just smashed the windows of a police car as well as another photo of police shooting pepper spray at the protesters.
Judging by his proximity to the protesters, as opposed to the other photographers who are standing safely behind the police as they shoot pepper spray into the crowd, Rourke got a little too close for comfort, not that he broke any laws. His photos, four of which are posted here, are well-worth the arrest.
By Carlos Miller
Minneapolis-St. Paul police have been raiding homes of people who plan to protest and document the upcoming Republican National Convention, confiscating cameras and laptops and arresting five people on “conspiracy to riot” charges.
One of the homes raided was the headquarters of Food Not Bombs, an international antiwar organization known to provide food for the homeless.
But police were mainly interested in the “RNC Welcoming Committee”, a self-described anarchist group that vowed on its Website it was going to “crash the convention”.
Police say they confiscated weapons, explosives and ingredients to make Molotov cocktails and disrupt buses.
The RNC Welcoming Committee said that police also confiscated “computers, boxes of protest literature, maps, cell phones, digital cameras, a video camera, the landlord’s pvc piping, and poster making supplies.”
The group posted a video today vowing they will protest the convention as planned.
By Carlos Miller
Brown Palace Hotel officials claim that the ABC news crew was blocking the entrance to the hotel, making it impossible for guests to enter or leave, which is why police ended up making an arrest.
They insist that police asked the reporters to step aside, even informing them that they had every right to stand on a public sidewalk, but the reporters insisted on standing in the doorway, which gave police no option but to arrest ABC producer Asa Eslocker.
It doesn’t sound much different than the way Miami police accused me of standing in the middle of a busy intersection, refusing to leave, which is why they had no choice but to arrest me.
I wasn’t standing in the middle of the street and I doubt the ABC news crew was blocking the entrance.
The comments came from Brown Palace Hotel public relations manager Shannon Dexheimer, who was responding to an email from one of my readers, who then forwarded the email to me.
The exact interchange is below, starting with the email that my reader sent to the hotel’s marketing department.
I will be alerting as many people as possible to ask them avoid staying at your hotel at all costs.
To use the police to have a photographer who was on public property arrested shows just how un-American you people are.
You deserve nothing but contempt.
This is Dexheimer’s response.
We have worked with hundreds of journalists with no issues. The ABC news cameras were intruding on the entrance of the hotel, creating an unsafe entrance/exit for our guests, which are our priority at all times. The police department asked them to move to the side several times so that our guests could enter/exit, and ABC refused. ABC was clearly told that they could stand on the sidewalk but it is illegal to block an entrance to any business, which is what they were doing. After not complying with the police requests, they were then asked to move to the other side of the street. It is our understanding that ABC continued to speak belligerently to the police and were arrested for not complying with police orders. The arrest resulted from issues between the police and ABC, not The Brown Palace Hotel.
By Carlos Miller
Minneapolis police wasted no time in violating First Amendment rights when they confiscated equipment from three New York City videographers who were in town to document the upcoming republican convention.
The videographers were from the Glass Bead Collective, an organization that documents police misconduct, including the notorious video of NYPD making mass arrests during a Critical Mass last year. Police confiscated a video camera, a still camera and a laptop.
Police returned the equipment the following day - apparently after a call from the videographers’ lawyer - which does not make up for the fact that they confiscated the equipment in the first place.
Police claim they stopped the three videographers because they suspected they had trespassed in a “nearby railroad yard”. They also claimed that they were treating this as a “homeland security” issue, as if the videographers could commit terrorist acts with their cameras.
The Associated Press article doesn’t specify exactly how close to the railroad yard were the videgraphers when police stopped them, nor does it mention if there was any evidence that they had even stepped onto the railroad yard in the first place.
By Carlos Miller
Denver police and Boulder County deputies can be seen bullying ABC producer Asa Eslocker by shoving him into the street and accusing him of impeding traffic, then choking him and handcuffing him. All for having committing the crime of standing on a public sidewalk.
StephenLoneWolf, who posted the video on Youtube, summed it up best when he asked:
“if this is the way the Denver PD and SD officers treat a MEMBER OF THE PRESS, with his press pass hanging in his neck, in the presence of a FULL CAMERA CREW, with camera rolling, how do you suppose they would treat you, or me, in a dark alley, in the middle of the night??”
By Carlos Miller
And when Denver police were not arresting journalists for standing on the sidewalk, they were clad in indistinguishable uniforms and masks - sans name tags - and arresting protesters.
In the second video, one of these officers shoves a Code Pink woman to the ground by slamming his baton against her chest. She is less than half his size. Quite a threat, I imagine.
Then another officer comes up from behind another Code Pink woman and arrests her as she is speaking into a camera.
By Carlos Miller
First, a Boulder County Sheriff’s deputy lied to anABC news crew by informing them that the public sidewalk they were standing on was owned by the Brown Palace Hotel.
Then the same deputy pushed news producer Asa Eslocker into traffic as a way to discourage him from reporting on the meeting between Democratic Senators and their VIP donors taking place inside the hotel in downtown Denver.
Finally, a Denver police officer arrived and handcuffed Eslocker, throwing him in the back of a paddy wagon and hauling him off to jail.
But even after all that, police on the scene were unable to tell ABC lawyers what the charges were against Eslocker.
Police eventually managed to conjure up charges against the news producer, which are the usual list of charges police use when violating someone’s First Amendment rights; trespassing, interference and failure to follow a lawful order. I’m surprised they didn’t throw in a disorderly conduct in there. Or maybe an obstructing traffic charge after they pushed him into the road.
What could Eslocker have been working on that caused so much furor?
Eslocker and his ABC News colleagues are spending the week investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC World News with Charles Gibson.
Obviously, somone with power did not want to be seen walking out of the hotel.
By Carlos Miller
Surely H.P. Lovecraft wouldn’t have minded having his headstone photographed by two of his biggest fans. Especially on his birthday. Not to mention that one of these fans, Caitlin R. Kiernan, has cited Lovecraft as one of her main influences in writing her own horror/fantasy novels and short stories.
The other fan is Kiernan’s partner, Kathryn A. Pollnac, a photographer who has been visiting Lovecraft’s grave since 1989.
As soon as the two women pulled up to the headstone at Swan Point Cemetery outside of Providence, Rhode Island, a security guard pulled up in a white car and told them they could not take photos. He then accused them of not having any respect for the dead.
Kathryn asked if he had any respect for the living because it was apparent that he did not.
This caused him to lose his temper, which made Kiernan believe he may have been drunk. This is how she describes the incident on her blog:
“He unleashed a stream of profanities at Spooky and me both. No, this does not make much sense. Within seconds, he was threatening to “call the PD” and proclaiming that he was “kicking us out.” So, yes, I was being kicked out of the cemetery where HPL is buried, where I’d only come to pay my respects and leave a plastic frog (I’ve been visiting the spot since 2000, Spooky since about 1989), where our great offence was snapping exactly two photographs of one of the most photographed headstones in New England. I said something to Kathryn, to the effect that we should just get back in the car, which was parked very nearby. The man continued to shout an inexplicable stream of threats and obscenities, including a couple of homophobic remarks. I only wish we’d had a tape recorder, or that Spooky had not been so rattled that she’d had the presence of mind to turn on the camera’s video, because I really wish that we had a word-for-word transcript.
“As Spooky was getting into the car, I finally looked him in the eye and said the only thing I said during the entire encounter (which elapsed over the space of maybe three or four minutes, start to finish, at the most). I pointed a finger at the man and, very quietly, I said, “You will be reported.” He screamed, “You do that, you piece of shit!.” This is the only time I got a clear look at the man. He was white, late middle-aged, seemed to have about three-days worth of beard (salt and pepper), and spoke with a heavy regional accent (don’t ask which one). I am fairly certain that he had been drinking, and he may have been intoxicated. He certainly acted like a belligerent drunkard.”
Kiernan has vowed to continue fighting for her rights by writing letters to the Providence Journal newspaper as well as the people who run Swan Point Cemetary.
“…I urge anyone else whose had trouble with Swan Point security to come forward. Last night, I was appalled. Today, the whole affair seems utterly unreal. If we’d been tagging gravestones or smoking weed or performing some obscene ritual to raise Cthulhu, even then his behaviour would have been questionable. As is, it was abusive and inexcusable (and, I suspect, illegal).”
By Carlos Miller
An Oakland Tribune photographer who was handcuffed and forced to sit on the side of the road after attempting to photograph an accident on the freeway has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Oakland.
Photojournalist Ray Chavez is seeking unspecified monetary damages as well as a court injunction that would force police to train its officers in allowing the media “reasonable access to accident and crime scenes and behind police lines.”
Judging by the incident that took place in May 2007, Oakland police are in dire need of training.
Oakland police Officer Kevin Reynolds told Chavez that he should leave, the suit said. When Chavez replied that he had a right to be there as a member of the press. Reynolds angrily told him that he “didn’t have any business here (and) that it was a crime scene,” the suit said.
When Chavez took photos of an arriving ambulance, Reynolds blocked his camera and told him, “You don’t need to take these kind of photos,” according to the suit.
Reynolds asked for Chavez’s identification and began writing him a citation, the suit said. As a California Highway Patrol cruiser arrived, Chavez again took pictures. That prompted Reynolds to say, “That’s it. You’re under arrest,” the suit said.
The officer made Chavez sit next to the overturned car with his hands behind his back for a half-hour, the suit said. Passing motorists mistakenly believed Chavez had caused the crash and “cursed and made derogatory references to and signs at plaintiff while he sat on the ground handcuffed,” the suit said.
While he was handcuffed, the officers told Chavez that he would be cited for impeding traffic and failing to obey a lawful order - which sounds extremely familiar to me. They eventually released him but warned him “don’t ever come here again to take these kinds of photos,” according to the lawsuit.
“It has been very stressful since I was humiliated by the OPD officers,” Chavez said in an interview. “They should do their jobs and not interfere with ours as media members. These cops need to be re-educated. I don’t think they know what the First Amendment and freedom of the press means.”
By Carlos Miller
When Andrew Carter saw a police van driving in reverse up the wrong way of a one-way street, he did what any photographer would do.
He photographed the incident. Then he tried to photograph the officer in the driver’s seat.
And then he wound up in jail for five hours.
His charges: assaulting a police officer with a camera, resisting arrest and drunk and disorderly conduct.
But it was the officer, Aqil Farooq, who told Carter to “fuck off”.
‘I was nearly knocked down once so when the police van did it I sort of said, “Hey mate no entry” but he just shouted out the window, “F*** off, this is police business”.
‘But when I took a photo of them he came running out, battered the camera from my hand on to the floor and arrested me for three crimes, none of which I’d committed.’
Carter was eventually released and the charges dropped. And the officer apologized to him in a tribunal meeting.
Now Carter is seeking compensation from the police department.
