The ACLU and the St. Paul\/Ramsey County authorities have duelling predictions about arrests at the RNC next month:<\/p>\n
With thousands of protesters expected on the streets facing thousands of police officers, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota is predicting that 800 people will be arrested during the week of the Republican National Convention and will have 75 lawyers on call to defend them.<\/p>\n
The St. Paul police forecast far fewer arrests, but Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher indicated this week that the ACLU’s numbers may be in the ballpark.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hm. Why would <\/em>the ACLU predict so many more arrests than the cops? Perhaps because they want <\/em>a
melee <\/strike>publicity bonanza?<\/p>\nRamsey County Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin said this week that she had heard those kinds of estimates. “I really don’t believe that it is going to reach 1,800, with the information I have now,” she said. “It could be closer to 800 and maybe less.”<\/p>\n
She said that during the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, the number of people arrested was in the teens.<\/p>\n
One reason for New York’s high arrest total was a decision by police to arrest a large number of people during one of the demonstrations. Most charges were later dropped. Gearin said she was hopeful that things will work differently here.<\/p>\n
“The St. Paul police are telling us they will be doing things more thoughtfully than New York,” she said. “They are being trained to avoid some of the arrest situations.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I am, if nothing else, generally confident in the Saint Paul Police.<\/p>\n
Next Tuesday, with support from the ACLU, about three dozen lawyers will attend a continuing legal education course at the offices of Fredrikson & Byron law firm in Minneapolis for training on how to represent people arrested in demonstrations, said Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota ACLU.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Must be all the lawyers released from helping defend civil liberties in the Heller <\/em>case.<\/p>\n
(Cough cough).<\/p>\n
Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said her office had developed a “tiered plan” to deal with arrested protesters. The first tier involves minimal felony arrests with only certain personnel assigned, she said.<\/p>\n
“If the felony arrests go higher, we have a second tier approach, more volume and more attorneys,” she said.<\/p>\n
Gaertner said that there is also “a third tier, where all heck breaks loose, with more lawyers involved in the charging.”<\/p>\n
She added: “We are ready for everything.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I see no mention of (checks list of leftybot paranoid predictions) Blackwater, attack dogs, water cannon or the military.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ACLU and the St. Paul\/Ramsey County authorities have duelling predictions about arrests at the RNC next month: With thousands of protesters expected on the streets facing thousands of police officers, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota is predicting that 800 people will be arrested during the week of the Republican National Convention and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-convention-08","category-days-of-adolescent-rage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}