[Updated with video] Three New York media professionals in town to cover the Republican National Convention were detained by Minneapolis police officers in Northeast Minneapolis early Tuesday morning. Police confiscated their equipment, which the trio calls a deliberate attack on their right to free speech.

Vlad Teichberg, Olivia Katz and Anita Braithwaite are from the New York-based Glass Bead Collective, a new media arts group. Among the equipment taken: video cameras, still cameras, laptops, notebooks, money and other personal belongings.

Teichberg said police officers stopped them around 2 a.m. after they got off the number 17 Metro Transit bus near NE 7th St. and 27th Ave.  According to Teichberg, police officers said there had been suspicious activity in the neighborhood, including a robbery, and officers proceeded to question them about their plans while also snapping photos and searching them, despite their objections. “We didn’t have any burglary tools,” said Teichberg. When they asked the officers if they were being arrested, “We were told we were being detained.”

According to a statement from the collective, the officers refused to file an official incident report or fill out a receipt inventorying seized property, claiming that they were allowed to conduct the search and seizure under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security due to security risks leading up to the
Republican National Convention.

Afterwards, the three journalists/artists were released without receiving any charges or tickets. (Police kept their belongings.) Teichberg said he recently learned that the Minneapolis Police Department is claiming they are being investigated for trespassing on train tracks. “We were targeted. They knew who we were. This was an attempt not to let us document what is happening at the convention… They’re taking away the media’s ability to protest,” he said.

Minneapolis Police Department spokesman Sgt. Bill Palmer said the case is under investigation and that there are some discrepancies between what the journalists are alleging and the police officers’ side of the story. “The MPD is not in the business of restricting free speech,” he said. “The actions of the officers appear reasonable.”

In this morning’s Pioneer Press story, attorney Bruce Nestor, who is the president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, describes the incident as a preemptive strike on a group that is well known to law enforcement. The collective, he said, has supplied video in court cases including that of a 2007 Critical Mass bike ride in New York City.

Update: Video by Ken Avidor from The UpTake