St. Paul settles suit with RNC protester

[Bjorn Against]

Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune

St. Paul settles suit with RNC protester
In paying $5,000, the city said it did not admit to wrong, but the defense said the deal is still a victory for free speech.

By RANDY FURST, Star Tribune

Last update: February 6, 2009 - 11:15 PM

A war protester will be paid $5,000 by the city of St. Paul to settle a federal suit he filed after he was detained by police last June for handing out leaflets outside the Xcel Energy Center.

Mick Kelly, 51, of Minneapolis was distributing fliers promoting a march on the Republican National Convention that took place three months later. He was stopped by St. Paul police, put in a squad car, driven 10 blocks away from the Xcel center, issued a citation and released. He then walked back and continued to hand out leaflets.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota protested the arrest, and Kelly told his story to the news media. Police investigated and announced the next day that he had been improperly detained and that the citation would be dropped and Kelly would be issued an apology. Mayor Chris Coleman called the arrest a "mistake." Kelly nonetheless filed suit in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

Ted Dooley, one of Kelly's attorneys, said the city of St. Paul does not admit wrongdoing in the settlement. But he said he still considered it a victory.

Read more: http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/39226432.html?elr=KArksUUUU

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The fact that the St. Paul police would see nothing wrong with arresting people for handing out fliers says a great deal about just how little respect they have for the first amendment.

[rfranklin]

1. That they can get away with a tiny settlement and not admit...

guilt is a stinging indictment of our legal system. This is an egregious example of depriving people of their god-given rights as noted in the Constitution.

Oh well, who gives a shit?

[clixtox]

2. The generally enlightened residents of St Paul sure should care!

What an embarrassment it must be to live in a community that would allow their police to ignore our most basic rights as guaranteed, supposedly, by our Constitution.

[Massacure]

5. Who cares whether or not they admit guilt?

Any settlement they give out is pretty much an admission of guilt regardless of what they try to say. It's not like there is anything to be gotten from having the mayor come out and say "We were wrong."

"Listen to what I say, and not what I do."

[Downtown Hound]

7. I disagree

St. Paul took out an insurance settlement prior to the RNC in preparation for these types of lawsuits. The monetary damages are nothing to them. An admission of guilt would actually mean them taking responsibility instead of just buying off the people who's rights they violated.

[Seldona]

3. K&R

What happened in St Paul is a national disgrace. The Feds, military, etc, were all part of the training that resulted in an American city under siege. Five grand makes that all go away? pfft!

[EFerrari]

4. Hopefully one of many settlements.

That was outrageous, the whole operation and I hope many more people whose rights were violated get as good or better than this.

[Downtown Hound]

6. I hope that's just the first one

I want to see every police officer and soldier involved in that disgrace have to pay out of their own pocket for the rest of their lives for that fucking travesty. The thing that's so pathetic about this is St. Paul has yet to admit they did anything wrong. It's like they're willing to shell out millions of dollars just in order to avoid admitting that fact.

130 felony arrests during the RNC. They are now down to just over 10. That tells me everything I need to know about how over the top the police response was. I'm glad this guy sued, and may he be only the first.

[Bjorn Against]

8. Most of the other civil suits won't go to court for a while yet.

Most of the civil suits will not go to court until after all the criminal trials are over and hopefully the defendants are found innocent. The last of the trials I believe will be those for the RNC 8 who are the eight people who were preemptively arrested and charged with terrorism despite the fact that there was no evidence that they were going to do anything aside from blocking traffic. The RNC 8 will probably not go to trial until September or October, and then the numerous civil lawsuits will be filed once those trials end. The reason this case was settled so early is because this arrest did not happen at the RNC, but rather three months before the RNC even began. Hopefully the other settlements will be bigger than this one, the city should be forced to pay out a lot more than $5,000 for such blatant disregard for the Constitution.

[Downtown Hound]

9. As I understand it about the RNC 8

There's not even any evidence that they were going to blockade traffic. They were merely the coordinators of many different protest groups, one of which is alleged to have stated plans to blockade traffic. Yeah, that case is a mother fucking outrage. All those nimrods who never thought that the Patriot Act would never be used to take away the civil rights of Americans should take a close look at this case and spend the next three hours kicking themselves.

I'm wondering if you can answer me this question though. Were any of the individuals who broke windows actually arrested? There's been a lot of speculation that some of that was done by agent provocateurs, and I was wondering if anybody knew if any of those people had been charged yet?

[Bjorn Against]

10. I actually witnessed someone who was almost certainly innocent get arrested for "breaking a window".

On the final night of the convention I was at the State Capitol and there was a young couple sitting on the Capitol lawn listening to the band that was up on stage when about twenty cops on bikes rode past me and surrounded this couple. They arrested them for what appeared to be nothing and hundreds of protesters then gathered around them and started taking pictures of the police. At that point about a hundred riot police swarmed into the Capitol grounds in an attempt to intimidate the protesters, and the night only got worse from there. The next day in the paper the story said that the couple sitting in the grass that was initially arrested were arrested because police claimed to have photos of one of them breaking a window earlier in the convention. I don't buy it for a minute, I was in those streets and there were riot police anywhere. Anyone who broke a window could not have possibly gotten away with it, that is unless the police let them get away with it because they knew that they were agent provocateurs. I know that there was a police car that was attacked for sure, and the police did not bother to pursue any of the attackers but instead unleashed on the peaceful protesters. The chances that the people who attacked the police car were not agent provacteurs is virtually zero.

So to answer your question, yes there were people arrested for breaking windows but to the best of my knowledge there is only one single person who has actually plead guilty to any sort of property destruction and the vast majority of people who were arrested appear to be completely innocent.

[Downtown Hound]

11. Yes. And then there's the infamous Macy's window

As far as I'm concerned this was almost certainly a provocateur. If you watch the video of it happening and pause it at 2:25, you can see a whole line of police cars that are seriously not more than 30 feet away. Yet this dude just walks right in front of them, smashes the window, and runs off, and they do nothing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOHHr2r_Oms