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Organizers have said they hope to attract up to 50,000 people to the protest Monday.
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Police officers walk out with a woman in handcuffs from a house that is being searched ahead of the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Saturday, Aug. 30, 2008. Protesters said police raided several Minneapolis homes on Saturday, just a few hours after Ramsey County sheriff's deputies raided an organizing site of a group seeking to disrupt the convention. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) |
Four people were arrested at two Minneapolis homes and booked on probable cause of conspiracy to commit a riot, said Gina Berglund, an attorney helping to represent protesters. There were no arrests at a third home targeted. Later, the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office said a fifth person was arrested at an undisclosed location.
``A lot of people in the activist community are really on pins and needles about who's next,'' Berglund said.
A fourth home, this one in St. Paul, was raided Saturday afternoon. Two people were detained outside the home in handcuffs for about two hours before St. Paul police arrived with a search warrant. St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh could not confirm whether anyone had been arrested.
Eileen Clancy, one of the founders of a New York City video collective called I-Witness Video, sent an e-mail saying she was inside the house and was told she couldn't leave while police waited for a search warrant. Clancy said an employee of the collective — whose Web site says it uses video to protect civil liberties — was being held outside the house in handcuffs.
On Friday night, Ramsey County sheriff's deputies raided an organizing site of a group — the RNC Welcoming Committee — that has publicized plans to disrupt convention activities. No one was arrested.
``They will not crush our spirit,'' said protester Lisa Fithian from Austin, Texas, at a gathering of about 300 people in a Minneapolis park Saturday afternoon. ``Our organization will continue. We will be on the streets.''
The raids drew criticism from other than the targets.
Dave Thune, a St. Paul city councilman whose district includes the theater building used as a hub for the protesters, denounced the raid, saying people had a legal right to assemble there.
``We spent so much time trying to welcome people to the city and now this is the way we start out,'' he said. ``It pretty much sucks.''
Arresting people on conspiracy charges to pre-empt disruptions is troubling because it stops people from exercising free-speech rights, said Chuck Samuelson, executive director of ACLU in Minnesota. He said he was also concerned about the broad scope of the search warrant. ACLU attorneys were monitoring the arrests, Samuelson said.
In a statement, Sheriff Bob Fletcher said authorities moved to head off planned illegal acts.
``These acts include tactics to blockade and disable delegate buses, breaching venue security and injuring police officers,'' Fletcher said.
The RNC Welcoming Committee, a self-described anarchist/anti-authoritarian group, has worked to help other protest groups with food and housing, but has also strategized to map roadways, bridges and access points to aid in disruptive protests.
Jordan Kushner, head of the mass defense committee of the National Lawyers Guild's Minnesota chapter, denied that criminal activity was being planned.
``They took away all their means of communication, so that they can't engage in legitimate political expression,'' Kushner said. ``This is police state harassment and spying.''
The sheriff's office said it confiscated weapons on Saturday including a machete, hatchet and several throwing knives, empty glass bottles, rags and flammable liquids, homemade devices used to disable buses, metal pipes, axes, bolt cutters, sledge hammers, empty plastic buckets made into shields, an Army helmet, and large amounts of urine.
Protesters said deputies also seized materials including laptops, protest literature and sign-making materials, bus schedules and a topographical map of St. Paul, site of Xcel Energy Center, the convention hall.
Betsy Raasch-Gilman, a member of the RNC Welcoming Committee, said St. Paul officials decided to allow the building raided Friday to reopen.
``We'll be using our space again,'' she said. ``It's quite a significant victory and it shows the sheriff's department way overstepped last night.''
On Saturday, Randi McClure stood outside one of the raided homes where three people were arrested. Residents were forced to move out and told it was being boarded up for undisclosed building code violations, she said.
``Where's their evidence? What are they doing? Obviously they're just trying to disrupt the protests,'' said McClure, 23, who was in the house at the time of the raid.
Walsh, the St. Paul police spokesman, said city officers helped the county carry out a search warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
``We've known all along that there are people coming to our city who are not planning to conduct themselves in a lawful manner,'' Walsh said. ``This is an affirmation of that.''
Those arrested were Monica Bicking, 23, Eryn Trimmer, 23, Garrett Fitzgerald, 25, Nathanael Secor, 26, and Erik Oseland, 21. Nestor, one of their attorneys, said Bicking, Trimmer and Fitzgerald all are from Minneapolis. It wasn't immediately known where Secor or Oseland were from.
