One year after the Republican National Convention started in St. Paul, two separate groups sued the city and its police officers, alleging their constitutional rights were violated.
In one lawsuit, three people claim police wrongly entered and searched a St. Paul duplex the day before the convention began. The other lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of about 200 people who plaintiffs' attorneys say were wrongly detained in a mass arrest in a park on Sept. 1, 2008—the first day of the four-day event.
"None of the people who were in this park committed a crime," said Robert Kolstad, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs. "What went on in the rest of the city has nothing to do with what happened to these people, other than the city used what other people may have done in other parts of the city to justify what they did here—and what they did here was illegal."
John Choi, the St. Paul city attorney, said the city will review the complaints and forward them to the insurance company handling its defense.
The city has a $10 million insurance policy to cover any damages stemming from claims of police misconduct related to the convention. The policy was bought by the Republican Party's host committee and paid for with private donations.
Tuesday's lawsuits join a handful of others in U.S. District Court, and they likely won't be the last. More than 800 people were arrested during the convention. The vast majority of arrests were for misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, and the charges were later dismissed or the cases were never prosecuted. A handful of felonies are pending in state court.
An independent review of police planning and procedures found law enforcement was generally restrained and professional, but some areas could have been handled better. That review did not investigate allegations of police brutality.
Both lawsuits filed Tuesday seek unspecified damages to be determined in court. Kolstad said the damages against all of his clients would vary, depending on what happened. Some of his clients were subjected to chemical irritants. Some spent up to 72 hours in jail. All of the charges stemming from that Shepard Road incident were dismissed, he said.
Some of his clients said they were more interested in holding police accountable than in whatever money could be gained from a civil suit. Reese Hagy, 24, of Minneapolis, who was on his way to a concert when he was detained for several hours, said he would like "a big apology letter."
Vain Mainstream, 23, of Minneapolis, said he was on his way to work security at the convention when he was "herded" into the park and arrested. He spent 72 hours in jail, and when he was released on the morning of the convention's final day—he went back to working security outside the Xcel Energy Center.
"What baffles me about the whole thing is I was working for the man. I was supposed to be keeping protesters off the street—and I was arrested as one," Mainstream said.
The convention's first day was the most violent, after hundreds of people split off from a peaceful, permitted protest and ran through the city, breaking windows, vandalizing cars, setting fires in trash bins and causing other damage.
Still, Kolstad said, police did not have probable cause to make mass arrests on Shepard Road.
"The law does not permit the cops ... to arrest masses of people on account of the actions of one or two or three or even a dozen or 20 other people," he said.
Two of the felony cases left in the court system were resolved Tuesday when two women pleaded guilty to second-degree assault charges for throwing roadway signs off an Interstate 94 bridge, the Ramsey County attorney's office said. The two women are awaiting sentencing.
Protesters file lawsuits 1 year after RNC |