Vain Mainstream (left) with attorney Robert Kolstad. Photo: Paul Demko, MnIndy

Vain Mainstream (left) with attorney Robert Kolstad. Photo: Paul Demko, MnIndy

Vain Mainstream just wanted to go to work. The 23-year-old Minneapolis resident was employed by Avalon Security on the opening day of the Republican National Convention last September. His assignment: to keep watch over a parking lot in downtown St. Paul and make sure that the thousands of protesters coursing through the streets of the city didn’t do any damage.

“I was notorious for being late,” Mainstream recalls. “So I figured I better show up early and find the best way to get to work.”

But as Mainstream headed down Shepard Road along the Mississippi River on his way to work, he suddenly found himself surrounded by dozens of police officers. Some were clad head-to-toe in riot gear. Others were on bikes or horses. Next thing Mainstream knew the cops were announcing that everyone in the riverfront park was under arrest.

Mainstream was transported to the Ramsey County Jail, where he was held for almost three days. He was initially charged with unlawful assembly and felony conspiracy to riot, but the charges were eventually dropped.

“What baffles me about the whole thing is I was working for the man,” Mainstream says. “I was supposed to be keeping protesters off the street and I was arrested as one.”

Mainstream is one of 27 plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Tuesday charging that the St. Paul Police Department violated their constitutional rights on the opening day of the convention.  The lawsuit alleges that police officers illegally detained more than 200 people and suppressed their free speech rights. The case is intended to be a class action on behalf of everyone arrested along Shepard Road and was filed on the one-year anniversary of the opening of the convention.

“The city has admitted that people were arrested preemptively in this park,” said attorney Robert Kolstad at a press conference held on the site of the mass arrest today. “They arrested them because they were afraid of what they might do in the future, which is a dangerous path for our government to take. Taken to its logical conclusion, what it means is that the government now believes that they can come to our houses and arrest us because they think that we might do something wrong. Our constitution simply doesn’t permit that.”

Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that they were subjected to tear gas and flash-bang grenades for no apparent reason. They also maintain that police officers never ordered people to disperse prior to making the mass arrests. According to Kolstad, none of the named plaintiffs in the case were convicted of any crimes stemming from activities on the opening day of the convention.

“We do not believe that any of the people who were herded into this park had done anything illegal,” he said. “If there was evidence that these people had actually done something wrong, some of those cases would have stuck.”

Kevin Hundt. Photo: Paul Demko, MnIndy

Kevin Hundt. Photo: Paul Demko, MnIndy

Kevin Hundt, another of the plaintiffs in the case, came to the RNC from Madison, Wisconsin in order to protest. The self-described anarchist arrived in town roughly a week prior to the gathering to help plan activities. He too got caught up in the mass arrest along Shepard Road. While they were being detained, Hundt said, a fellow protester wet her pants because she wasn’t permitted to use the bathroom.

“It was really depressing to see,” he says. “It just made us feel pathetic.”

But unlike Mainstream and dozens of others, he wasn’t taken to jail.  Neither was Hundt ticketed or charged with any crime.

“Here I am, actually an anarchist, and they didn’t arrest me,” he recalls. “But hundreds of people, not anarchists, got arrested. Where’s the rhyme or reason here?”

After Mainstream was finally released from jail after three days, he returned to work at Avalon Security. His assignment: help with security outside the Xcel Energy Center. Among the tasks that Mainstream says he performed was letting Newt Gingrich into the convention.

“It baffles me that they would try to say that we’re dangerous people,” he says. “If we were so dangerous why would they let us get back to our jobs protecting the convention that we were apparently protesting.”