Police Raid Protester Houses In Advance Of Republican Convention

Police raided locations in Minnestoa this weekend, including the homes of activists in Minneapolis where protesters were organizing actions for the Republican National Convention set to commence today. Well-known bloggers Jane Hamsher and Glen Greenwald visited the homes, arriving after the raids at one and during the raids at another. Greenwald is posting on the events at Salon and has included video. Saturday night, Greenwald wrote:

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.

Officers from the Ramsey County Sheriff's office reportedly raided a theater Friday night in St Paul and took concert attendees into custody. It was also reportedly the Ramsey Sheriffs who raided the Minneapolis private residences Saturday morning. Minneapolis is in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The National Lawyers Guild dispatched representatives to the scene. One representative reports that lawyers demanded to see warrants for the raids but that the Ramsey County Sheriffs office seemed to have none to show. Greenwald later wrote that the officers did have warrants but delayed in presenting them. "The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. [Residents] 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."

The Uptake's Ken Avidor shot the footage above.

Comments

[KevinFitzz]

I saw something eerily similair on Democracy Now! , a cable show here in Sacramento, where the MN police raided a different location with protesters. They also didn't have any warrants. hmmmm.

[walk0nwalls]

A frustrating and ultimately futile exercise in immense, inconsolable anger has been taking place at my house today.

I need a reason to believe in this government.

[KarlaElisa]

This has been going on across the country for some time now with little if any media attention. The MSM always reduces our numbers protesting unless they are filming a broken window or some graffitti that they are trying to infer was done by the largely peaceful demonstrators.
It's been a police state. Y'all just didn't know it.

[MissAngela]

How was that at all legal? Anyone explain to my naive head where we live again? Germany, 1930's?

[kissmygrits]

Thank god this is SOMEWHERE. I want to see this on the frickin evening news. This is UNAMERICAN!

[SILVANUS]

POLICE STATE. HELLO.
Go back to yoor football games and Toby Keith CDs.
Sleep sleep sleep

[TrooAmerican]

I want to know how the judicial system is ruling that these - Preemptive Raids are even remotely legal in any way shape or form?

How can they use any excuse to arrest people for what they "may do" even when its clear that they were wrong about these groups anyway.
All their character witnesses claim these kids are totally peaceful and not in anyway trouble makers.
As opposed to the groups that were really rioting at the convention area.
Why didnt the police raid those houses..... the ones where they were planning the big violent riots?
Someone must pay for these illegal transgressions against the public.

[ultrabop]

This is what the Justice Department has been filled with stooges for. Fascism has arrived. Wait till they start "disappearing" people. It's already started with the Arab population.

[arocco]

Someone like Mark Green should put all the videos of raids made by the Minn. police on the citizens and journalist into a video and get it distributed on You Tube and than try and raise money so they can make a campaign spot on national TV. This dynamite, it shows our Fascist State in action. This is Germany all over again.

[reallysubsumed]

To understand the real context here google "Twin Cities Indymedia" and "Coldsnap Legal" along with "www.nornc.org". These sites tell the full story and give details on the horrific police repression.

[XME]

What country are we in again?

[GregoryjHutter]

The police in this country are nothing but thugs. I fear them more than criminals--what's the difference?

[Swedishgal]

They took all that stuff and forwarded it to the RNC undoubtedly so that they know how we operate. Don't they have enough information on us as Dems? Why are they so insecure? They are the most fearful group of people I've ever known. Guns and wars to protect us. What cowards.

[RobinLandseadel]

More, it gets worse:

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message597346/pg1

http://www.opednews.com/articles/CRACKDOWN-BEGINS-Food-Not-by-Keith-McHenry-080901-646.html

[Rubyone78]

How horrifying, as a resident of Minneapolis, to wake to a burgeoning police state... raids and baseless attacks from those who are there to "protect and serve" us. It truly shames me that, coming from such a historically liberal stronghold as the Twin Cities, our national reputation has been reduced to this: Get in line with our viewpoint or suffer the consequences. This is evidently how we honor the memory of our most illustrious representatives, those who fought tirelessly for our basic rights. An extreme disappointment.

[Furby]

If you call a vast field full of weeds a burgeoning infestation, it was high time to wake up.

[Rubyone78]

I appreciate the implication that I, like so many of our population, have been snowed by the extreme fear tactics and quashing of personal freedoms that have run rampant in this country over these past few years... By and large, I am inclined to agree with this assessment.

Unfortunately for Twin Cities residents however, this recent transformation from liberal metropolis to fascist regime came virtually overnight. While many other parts of the country have become further mired in the depths of miserable conservatism, we've been lucky, we've hung on to the strong grass roots politics of those who have so proudly represented us in the past: Paul Wellstone, Hubert H. Humphrey and Walter Mondale, to name a few, and have largely kept the weeds at bay.

I see what you're getting at, but my eyes are open, thanks.