Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Police harassment at RNC convention?

A while back, I tagged two posts dealing with this incident. First, Jason at Countercolumn:

The libtards will argue that St. Paul police are running roughshod over the 1st and 4th amendments by being heavy-handed in detaining or arresting convention protesters, all of whom, naturally, are exercising their constitutional freedoms by holding hands, singing old Joan Baez songs, and picking lice out of each others' armpit hair or whatever it is they do. (Curiously, Glenn Greenwald is here posting under his own name).
Conspiracy to kidnap delegates? Meh. It slipped their slippery little minds, I guess.

More measured, but apparently missing the article describing the kidnap plot, is Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy.

...if the group's website is any guide to the group's plans, it's certainly unsurprising that the police are trying to stop the group from executing its plans.
....
As you might guess, the police weren't about to let this plan play out. As best I can tell from news reports, the County Sheriff's Office obtained warrants to search a handful of so-called "hippie houses" (open group homes, apparently) and storage sites based on probable cause to believe that the members of the anarchist group had engaged in "conspiracy to riot" and either had evidence of the crime there or were themselves present. They executed the warrants and made a handful of arrests of the group's organizers. Although there are blog reports of a lawyer for the group being "arrested," it seems that it was only a temporary detention because he happened to be present when a warrant was executed. This is generally permitted, see Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93 (2005) (person present at scene handcuffed while warrant executed).
If there's something wrong with what the police did here, it's not clear to me what it is. Perhaps the website is just a joke, and everyone knew it. I understand that the police had undercover agents infiltrate the group to establish that the plans were serious, and I imagine much of the cause in the warrant is from their undercovers. But if for some reason the whole thing is a joke and the police didn't get it, then the police are fools. And perhaps they raided the wrong house, whether because they had probable cause pointing them to the wrong place or because they executed the warrant incorrectly. If so, that's bad. But as far as I can tell, no one is disputing that the website is serious and the group really did plan what they said they were planning. And as best I can tell, no one seems to be suggesting that the warrant was executed at the wrong house. So at least so far, I don't see anything the police have done that is wrong or blameworthy.

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