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The ACLU of Minnesota issued a travel alert Wednesday for Minnesotans planning to travel to Arizona over the July 4 weekend. It issued the advisory in response to Arizona’s new immigration law, SB 1070, which directs police to check citizenship papers of individuals suspected of being in the country illegally. The ACLU has drafted “know you rights” materials in English and Spanish, which it is making available free to state residents.

“If Minnesotans are planning to travel to Arizona for the holiday weekend, they need to know their rights,” Charles Samuelson, executive director of the ACLU of Minnesota said in a statement. “In Arizona, officials are not waiting for the new law to take effect to start questioning people about their immigration status. People who look or sound ‘foreign’ are more likely to be stopped for minor infractions like having a broken taillight or jaywalking and then asked for their ‘papers’ if police think that they could be in the country unlawfully.”

The new law, which takes effect July 29, prompted a similar alert on the other side of the border. In late April, Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S., Arturo Sarukhan, issued an advisory warning its citizens against travel to Arizona.

The National Lawyers Guild has released a statement about the items seized in police raids on Saturday targeting the homes of anti-RNC protesters. Of particular note: buckets of urine that Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said were going to be used against police.

Two buckets contain grey water and were being used to flush toilets, to conserve water, in the upstairs bathroom. Both were identified in the inventory as “unidentified liquid.” The third bucket, as shown by inventory sheets, was seized from illegal apartment over a garage in the rear. This apartment has been occupied for several years by a person unconnected to the house occupants or the RNC. No bathroom was in the illegal apartment and urine was collected in a bucket. This was listed as “unidentified yellow liquid” in the inventory sheets.

Bruce Nestor, chapter president of the Minnesota National Lawyers Guild, further explained the grey water and urine buckets for the Minnesota Independent.

“Sheriff Fletcher does not have three buckets of urine. There are two buckets of gray water in the bathroom that were collected from a downstairs sink. It’s part of a permaculture program to minimize impact on the environment. They disconnected the sink drainage from the sewer system and use it for toilet water, to use less water when they flush.

The other bucket was collected from an illegal garage apartment. The guy had been living there for years, and did not have a working toilet.

Yes, he peed in a bucket. But he did not have anything to do with the RNC. He has nothing to do with the people living in the house. He has nothing to do with protests. It was seized from an apartment that has absolutely nothing to do with the people in the home or any plan to protest the RNC.”

The Guild also took issue with the sheriff’s office characterization of other items taken.

“Police seized political literature, cellphones, computers, cameras, personal diaries, and many common household items such as paint, rope, and roofing nails. These items are present in almost any home in south Minneapolis and are not evidence of a crime,” said Nestor in a press statement Saturday evening. “Seizing boxes of political literature shows the motive of these raids was political. Sheriff Fletcher has staged a publicity stunt, violated constitutional rights, and misrepresented what was seized during the raids,” he said.

The Guild also said it will be aggressively defending the six activists being held by Ramsey County.

“Conspiracy to commit riot was the charge used against the Chicago 8 after the police riots in Chicago
during the 1968 Democratic Convention,” said Heidi Boghosian, executive director the National Lawyers Guild. “Guild attorneys defended those charged in 1968 and we will do so again now.”

MnIndy’s Molly Priesmeyer contributed to this report.

As the Republican National Convention draws closer, fears of police overreach are already being realized. In just the past four days, a number of incidents have raised the suspicions of Twin Cities civil libertarians.

On Saturday evening, six people were detained in downtown St. Paul. The group was allegedly photographed, patted down and had its belongings searched without permission. They also said they were asked if they were “militant protesters or anarchists.” (See MnIndy’s coverage, including The UpTake’s video, here.)

“We were told that we were being made an example of and that we should go and tell our friends that they will meet the same reaction if they’re seen anywhere near the location of the St. Paul Police Department Headquarters,” said one of those detained by police.

Monday evening, a former journalist taking pictures on Minneapolis’ North Side was handcuffed after photographing police at the Special Operations Division offices, according to MPR’s Tim Nelson. The former journalist said he was “warned to stay away from all of the RNC activities. The investigators explained to me that nothing would happen to me unless one of the sites I photographed was compromised, or I was detained again for anything related to the RNC.”

But the most egregious example of pre-RNC police abuses occurred Tuesday morning in Minneapolis’ Northeast neighborhood.

Three independent journalists from New York City were detained near a bus stop at 27th and Washington St. NE and their reporter’s notes, cameras and computers confiscated. The Minneapolis Police Department initially told the trio that they were stopped because police were investigating several car break-ins in the area. By the end of the detention, the police said “homeland security” concerns and trespassing in a rail yard were the reason they were stopped.

Vlad Teichberg, Olivia Katz and Anita Braithwaite are from the New York-based Glass Bead Collective. They traveled to the Twin Cities to attend the convention and document interactions between protesters and police.

They insist they did not go to any rail yards and have witnesses who saw them on the No. 17 bus line.

“We felt like we’d been mugged by the police,” Teichberg said Tuesday afternoon. In addition to the detention, police searched the trio’s belongings without their permission and confiscated the equipment without providing them with a receipt of what was taken.

They even confiscated Braithwaite’s clothing and money.

“The police refused to even give us a receipt,” said Teichberg. “We do not know if we can get our equipment back, because as far as we know they are not even acknowledging it is in their possession.”

The trio’s lawyers say that MPD has indicated they want a search warrant to view the contents of the computer and cameras.

“What they took away was our ability to report,” said Teichberg. “What kind of homeland security do you have when police can come and take away your right to exercise your constitutional rights?”

Bruce Nestor of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild said they want to see the squad car video of the detention, and added that the shifting story told by police raises questions. “We are putting on public notice to the Minneapolis Police Department that those squad car videos need to be preserved in unedited form.

“This is absolutely outrageous behavior by the Police Department towards individuals who are engaged in protected First Amendment activity and have a record of exposing police misconduct,” said Nestor.

The Glass Bead Collective’s video has been used in court to demonstrate police actions at protests.

Do these incidents raise the possibility that authorities are using the RNC as an excuse to overstep constitutional rights?

“Arrogance doesn’t need an excuse,” said St. Paul attorney Ted Dooley. “These types of incidents happen frequently. The difference now is that people are watching them, witnessing and giving testimony.”

Dooley also said that these actions aren’t about intimidation. “It’s a straight out challenge. It’s not really a coincidence that they went after someone who had a history of exposing just this kind of behavior by the police,” he said. “It just seemed a little bit planned.”

Indeed, residents of the Northeast neighborhood where the incident occurred, as well as National Lawyers Guild members stopping by Tuesday, said it appeared that undercover surveillance has been occurring there this afternoon.

“It’s very ominous,” said Dooley. “The attack on these three was outrageous. One of them from New York said, ‘The police in New York can be assholes, but even there, they don’t just walk up and take stuff.’ It’s dumbfounding.”

“We support and fight for First Amendment rights.  This case is about that,” said Kathi Di Nicola, director of media relations for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota.  In an interview with Minnesota Monitor, Di Nicola said that the organization was generally supportive of the ruling in State of Minnesota v. Otterstad.

The defendants in the case, Luke Otterstad and Robert Rudnick, were cited by Anoka police for endangering public safety.  According to court records, the two were displaying “two signs on the public sidewalk of the Ferry Street bridge above Highway 10 in Anoka. Both signs were about four feet high, and when displayed side-by-side the two signs looked like one sign about 13 feet long.”  The signs carried a message saying that former congressional candidate Patty Wetterling supported abortion, and according to the court records, included a “graphic picture of an aborted fetus above the highway.”

While the state contended that the signs had posed a threat to public safety, Justice Barry Anderson, writing for the majority, disagreed. Even though there had been an accident reported at the site of the protest, Anderson noted that “the accident on Ferry Street involved drivers who could see only the blank backs of appellants’ signs. While Sergeant [Michael] Goodwin characterized the accident as ‘gawker-related,’ whatever gawking occurred was apparently the result of the police investigation, not appellants’ signs.”

Anderson also said that the protesters had been unconstitutionally targeted for their message.

“The record makes clear … that the anonymous phone call was prompted by the content of the signs, not their effect on traffic,” said Anderson.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Alan Page disagreed that the signs were similar to those usually posted on the road, noting, “I would not equate appellants with ‘road authorities, their agents, employees, contractors, and utilities.’”  But Page said that “would reverse the convictions under the public nuisance statute simply because it is clear on this record that the state’s prosecution of appellants under the statute was content-based and therefore barred by the First Amendment.”

Charles Samuelson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, hailed the ruling.

“Fundamentally, that is a free and political speech case,” Samuelson told the Minnesota Monitor. He cited the “ongoing problem” of police “busting people, especially over the interstate, who have signs that say, ‘Vote for Joe Schmoe,’ or ‘Vote Against Proposition 101.’”

“We’re happy about this ruling,” he said.

And naturally, pro-life activists were pleased as well.  Joe Scheidler, national director of the Pro-Life Action League, called the ruling a “big victory for pro-life activists” in a posting on the group’s website. “This ruling is particularly important to the Pro-Life Acton League and those who have taken part in any of our nearly two-hundred Face the Truth Tours, because we have been likewise threatened with arrest and confiscation of our signs by police in two jurisdictions, Mundelein IL a year ago and Bridgeview IL this year,” Scheidler said.

Di Nicola, however, suggested that anti-abortion activists could take a different tack.

“We would hope that folks that felt so strongly about abortion would do more to provide health care for women – birth control, reproductive health care, concrete things that help women avoid unwanted pregnancy,” she said.