[Updated] St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman’s office issued a statement this morning announcing that the city attorney won’t prosecute journalists who were cited by authorities at the Republican National Convention (RNC) with “presence at an unlawful assembly,” a misdemeanor charge.

That pertains specifically to the journalists who were swept up in the massive arrests during protests in St. Paul on the convention’s first and last days (including MnIndy’s Paul Demko, who was arrested on the last night of the RNC).

How many people that might include hasn’t been tallied yet, but nearly 50 of the more than 800 people arrested or detained were onsite to cover the RNC, according to a MnIndy analysis (see comments for additions to our original list). Their cases will be individually reviewed according to this policy, according to City Attorney John Choi.

In other news related to RNC journalist arrestees, it should be noted that the pending charges against “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman and two of her producers are being dropped. Choi explained that his office is declining prosecution in Goodman’s case, “because the facts and circumstances related to Amy Goodman fell outside of our charging policy for obstruction of legal process cases,” which is what she was cited for.

Choi explained that, “In conjunction with the police department and community activists, the City Attorney’s Office has developed a more conservative approach to handling obstruction of legal process cases. We felt that same policy should apply to this case.”

Further, after reviewing the facts, circumstances and video evidence, pending unlawful assembly charges against the show’s two producers are also being cleared.

Choi said the decision doesn’t necessarily mean the arrests were improper. “What defines probable cause for an arrest is different from what defines probable cause for a charge. … We have to look at whether we can succeed at court,” he said.

Minneapolis attorney John Lundquist, who represented Goodman on the matter, said, “Obviously we’re very happy that [the city attorney] made the right call in declining the charges. It was a little slow in coming, but I agree that it was correct to dismiss it. Clearly there was never any prosecutable case.” Further, “I strongly disagree there was ever any probable cause for the arrests in the first place.”

Mayor Coleman said in the prepared statement about the policy decision made concerning journalists at the RNC, “This decision reflects the values we have in St. Paul to protect and promote our First Amendment rights to freedom of the press. … A journalist plays a special role in our democracy and that role is just too important to ignore.” While police carried out their charge to protect public safety, “we are serving the public’s interest to maintain the integrity of our democracy, system of justice and freedom of the press.”

The statement acknowledges the “growing media profession in print, broadcast and the Internet, the city attorney’s office will use a broad definition and verification to identify journalists who were caught up in mass arrests during the convention.”

The Glass Bead Collective said the video came from a cameraman who hid his video before being arrested. From the press release, “Video released today shows the indiscriminate arrest of a crowd of two hundred at the waterfront across from a concert on Harriet Island Regional Park during this month’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The video includes multiple angles of the event as well as an interview with the cameraman who buried his footage and was one of almost two hundred people arrested for rioting without probable cause.”

A minority of the Minneapolis City Council decided Wednesday against requesting answers from Chief Tim Dolan on police actions during the Republican National Convention (RNC). And by killing a proposed staff directive in committee, four members of the council’s Public Safety and Regulatory Services Committee made sure that the seven council members not on the committee won’t have a say on the issue.

Two backers of a more expansive inquiry — Gordon (Green Party) and Schiff (DFL) — presented what they termed as reasonable additions to the scope of the police department after-action report that Mayor R.T. Rybak outlined last week. (See the five proposed points of inquiry which appear as italicized additions to the mayor’s list.) But the day found the duo falling into now-familiar Don Quijote/Sancho Panza roles as they continue struggle in vain for elevated police accountability — first by casting lone votes against putting city cops under other jurisdictions’ control last fall, then by calling for an independent, blue-ribbon review of RNC law enforcement two weeks ago.

Council Members Paul Ostrow and Diane Hofstede and Council President Barbara Johnson — joined in the end by Committee Chair Don Samuels — quickly framed the proposal as an unwarranted call for investigating police work mounted by elected officials who were overstepping their authority.

Johnson said the MPD’s internal review of an event she called “unprecedented in our history” should follow the department’s “standard operating procedure.” She ridiculed Gordon’s arguments in favor of gathering additional information as a piece with “hype” about an armed-camp environment that she termed “ridiculous.” (Although her dismissive stance was undercut by Samuels’ description of an atmosphere downtown in which “anything could happen at any time.”

Samuels pronounced his own pre-judgement of the police after-action report by proposing “success report” as an appropriate title. What no one would call the police review was an “investigation” — a term that Ostrow said “presumes that things were done that were improper.”

If, in the committee debate, “investigation” became a bad enough buzzword that it set Johnson (in her words) “a-twitter,” there was another word so outre that no one would say it: “lawsuit.”

Ostrow had Dolan repeat the news that no formal complaints had yet been filed, although Dolan, in the course of his wide-ranging remarks, said that he and others had set in motion internal reviews into at least two incidents — one being the repeated macing of a young protester caught on a widely viewed news video.

But any satisfaction about the absence of complaints filed at City Hall will only last until the day (which is yet to arrive) on which papers are served there in lawsuits that protesters have promised to file over alleged police abuses during the more than 800 RNC-related arrests.

The debate followed an earlier tussle in which Schiff and Gordon bristled at a staff recommendation that Minneapolis sign a Memorandum of Understanding allowing city cops to serve under the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. during the presidential inauguration in January. Minneapolis sent 40 officers to the inauguration for the first time four years ago, MPD Inspector Rob Allen told the committee, and this year is one of 50 departments to get an invite.

But the timing for the request was unfortunate, Schiff said, coming as the city’s review of MPD actions under outside command during the RNC is just getting underway. Citing the deal’s fine print, Schiff disputed MPD Inspector Rob Allen’s assurances that federal agents wouldn’t direct Minneapolis officers, and that problems getting reimbursed for pension costs from overtime hours couldn’t arise. But the committee nixed any delay or alterations to the plan, on a 4-2 vote reprised soon after on the RNC report issue.

Here are seven minutes of audio highlights excerpted from the hour-long committee debate on the police report on the RNC — mostly from its emotional ending. A transcription follows below.

COUNCIL MEMBER PAUL OSTROW: … I personally don’t see a need for council action. I’m just going to be really blunt about this, because I know what the headlines are going to be. The headline is going to be: “City council calls for investigation of Minneapolis Police Department.” We don’t need an investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department when the Minneapolis Police Department itself is already saying that it’s moving forward on an after-action report. … The police department worked incredibly hard — our city worked incredibly hard — to get this right, and I think they’re just as committed to a good and solid review of this after the fact as they were to good, solid planning before that. So that’s why I’m voting ‘no’ today.

COUNCIL PRESIDENT BARBARA JOHNSON: I must support Council Member Ostrow and not vote for this. I completely agree with what you’re saying, that this is a typical action that our police department would take, to analyze an event that we’ve had of this size. The other thing — what sort of gets me in a twitter about this is some of the language that gets used. “Investigation” was used another time here, after we talked about that being a kind of buzzword here. It was just used again. The fact that the concerns come out about who is in control of the federal government, what political party is in control of the federal government. … This federal government is not run by the Republicans. It’s run by the people of this country. And that language is what sets me in a mood to say, I think the best process that we should go through is letting our professional staff evaluate what went on in this community as a result of a major convention that was unprecedented in our history … I had a call from someone — I think it was the Thursday before the convention started — and he was a radio reporter from New York City. And he said, “I hear that your city’s being turned into an armed camp.” And I said, “What? What are you talking about?” There was such hype about this. It was just ridiculous. So I would like to get down to some rationality and some professionalism about what went on here, and I think our police department has that capacity to do that, and they are doing that as part of their standard operating procedure. …

COUNCIL MEMBER CAM GORDON: I guess I’m disappointed, because I realize that without four people supporting this it won’t go forward. And we’re certainly already going to be getting some information, but we’re not going to be getting all the information that I think would be useful to me, and I would suspect to the other council members, and I would suspect to the city … I don’t think we should be afraid of information. I don’t think we should be afraid of knowledge. I don’t think we should be afraid of asking questions. In fact, I think it’s seeking knowledge and seeking truth and asking questions that’s going to get us to the best policies in the end. And so I don’t know why you’re trying to shut the door on asking questions about some of these incidents that went on. In fact, I would think you’d have more questions, you’d want to get more information … So I guess I’ll keep asking the questions and trying to seek those answers, and I’d appreciate that if council members would help me do that and try to do that in our capacity as a council but it doesn’t feel like there’s the support for it here.

COUNCIL MEMBER DIANE HOFSTEDE: I am not going to support the motion for the reasons, certainly, given. But I also want to say that I was in the downtown, and regularly am in the neighborhood, and I thought it was just an experience that almost reminded me of experiences that I had when I was in the downtown area 20 years ago. People were … on the streets, shopping and interfacing and interacting. And having a good time. And some of those people were our constituents. This is a good thing. And, yes, I did see that people were on the streets, obviously they were security individuals. But I didn’t feel threatened. And I didn’t have anybody who approached me. When I asked them how do you feel, you know what they said? You have a beautiful city. I feel safe and welcome here. I don’t think I need to say anything more.

COMMITTEE CHAIR DON SAMUELS: I’m also going to support Council Member Ostrow’s position on this. I think I was sympathetic towards the concept of a report initially with Council Member Gordon. But I think the mayor’s and the chief’s agreement as to what would be in the report initially is not significantly different enough from what is proposed here to make us have a demand or request from the council. Because it does color how this is presented, as Council Member Ostrow said, both in the press and in the public perception, that there is some kind of call to accountability here, when in fact it’s really a success report. And I would be willing to support it if it was called a success report. Because I think that’s really what it is. And I was downtown here, I was in the center watching the TV cameras, and also in the deployment area, and you could definitely have the sense that anything could happen at any time. And in spite of that we had this incredible success.

COUNCIL MEMBER GARY SCHIFF: Mr. Chair, happy to take you up on your offer. Currently this is called an after-action review. If you would like it called a success report, happy to make that motion to get your support today.
SAMUELS: Well, that was just a kind of gesture, just communicating the spirit. It was not a serious proposal.
SCHIFF: Ah, I was hoping not to call your bluff. I was hoping you were sincere. I just will express disappointment. Since this report is to be written by the police chief, I don’t know what could possibly be in the report that my colleagues could be afraid of. This is not an investigation by the city council, this is a report by the police chief. So: disappointed.

The top third of a Triple Chaser grenade. (Photo: Jeff Severns Guntzel)

The RNC is over, and it’s not just Sarah Palin exhaling relief. The mayors of each twin city have issued their unanimous judgment of law enforcement actions during the daily protest rallies and marches of the RNC.

Their one-word summary: Convention police showed “restraint.”

Advocates for the hundreds, perhaps thousands of protesters (and a few journalists) who were pepper sprayed, maced, smoke-bombed, shoved, shot at (with non-lethal “impact rounds”), dispersed, cited, and detained have issued their own consensus message: See you in court.

The City of St. Paul had $50 million in federal money to spend on security for the RNC. Anybody on the streets of downtown St. Paul during the convention could have a close-up look at how some of that taxpayer money was spent, as police in riot gear showed off their tactical training and weaponry daily.

Members of the Minneapolis City Council have already called for an independent investigation with public hearings. In a statement issued on Friday, council members Cam Gordan and Gary Schiff noted:

Throughout the Republican National Convention we have seen and heard a number of disturbing reports of actions taken by law enforcement, including the Minneapolis Police Department personnel, against journalists, observers, medics, bystanders, people engaged in peaceful protest and others.

We have also heard stories of patience and flexibility on the part of many law enforcement personnel. We thank and commend law enforcement for the service they provide and the many instances in the past few days where police as well as protesters have shown restraint and the ability to engage in healthy civic protest without incident.

There is, it seems, a question for every one of those fifty million security dollars shoveled into St. Paul’s coffers. Having witnessed a good number of the confrontations between law enforcement and protesters last week, this reporter has a few of his own.

TRIPLE CHASER GRENADES

The bottom third of a Triple Chaser grenade. (Photo: Jeff Severns Guntzel)

I watched police in full riot gear throw dozens of explosive “Triple Chaser” tear gas grenades over four days of RNC protests. The manufacturer of these grenades, Defense Technology, explains them like this:

A pyrotechnic grenade consisting of three separate canisters pressed together with separating charges between each section. When deployed, this grenade will separate into three distinct sub-munitions spaced approximately 20 feet apart – allowing increased area coverage in a short period of time.

The manufacturer’s literature warns of “injury or death to you or others” and “serious damage to property.” When and how were law enforcement officers trained to use these grenades? Was it up to individual officers or were there signals from commanding officers?

Two sections of a Triple Chaser grenade burn and fume on Kellogg Avenue. (Photo: Jeff Severns Guntzel)

At one point on Kellogg Boulevard, an officer tossed one of these devices right at my feet and I jumped just in time for the explosion of the grenade’s three burning and gassing sections. What would have happened if I had not jumped and the grenade had exploded at my feet? There were other occasions where I observed people running with a Triple Chaser tumbling just behind them. Was law enforcement risking unnecessary injury to protesters and were they acting within their training? How many Triple Chaser grenades were ordered for RNC security? How many were used?

PEPPER SPRAY

Law enforcement used high-powered pepper spray aerosol cans. (Photo: Jeff Severns Guntzel)

The first time I witnessed the use of red, hand-triggered pepper spray canisters was also at Kellogg Boulevard. Law enforcement officers sprayed liberally and often at close range — directly into the faces of protesters, clearly marked legal observers, and credentialed media. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this was caught on camera by a FOX television crew here.

How were law enforcement officers trained to use pepper spray? Is there a minimum distance at which officers were advised to stand when using it?

IMPACT ROUNDS

The casing of a Direct Impact round. (Photo: Jeff Severns Guntzel)

Perhaps the most ominous and persuasive crowd control weapon on display in the streets of downtown St. Paul was the rifle that fired “impact rounds.” Here’s how the manufacturer of the impact rounds (again, Defense Technology) explains the ammunition:

The 40MM Direct Impact round is a “point of aim, point of impact” direct fire round that is most commonly used by tactical teams in situations where maximum deliverable energy is desired for the incapacitation of an aggressive, non-compliant subject.

The Direct Impact round is intended for direct fire deployment. The operator
should be adequately trained in the use of Specialty Impact Munitions and have
a thorough understanding of the round and considerations for selecting shot
placement such as level of threat, target distance, size, and clothing.

The Direct Impact round will prove most successful for incapacitation when used
within its optimal energy range of approximately 10-75 feet, although it may be
used in situations from 5 to 120 feet. The optimal zone offers the necessary
energy and accuracy to target the large muscle groups of the buttocks, thigh, and even the knees of the subject. These areas provide sufficient pain stimulus, while greatly reducing serious or life threatening injuries. However, the size and weight of this round makes it the safest of all choices for engaging the abdomen or upper torso of the subject.

The Direct Impact round can also deployed in crowd control situations to protect
the riot line, cover or enhance chemical munitions, or targeting specific agitators and organizers of the crowd. When used in this fashion, it is primarily both a psychological deterrent and physiological distraction serving as a pain compliance device to either get the crowd (or subject) moving or keeping them at a designated distance.

Who were the law enforcement officers chosen to carry rifles capable of firing impact rounds? How were they vetted? Were these officers permitted to shoot through a smoke screen? How many of these rounds were ordered? How many were fired? The rounds can be ordered with a chemical irritant included. Did any of the rounds fired during the RNC include an irritant?

Officers carrying impact rounds. (Photo: Jeff Severns Guntzel)

There is also a more broad line of questioning. How should the deployment of any of these weapons be judged? There were clear incidents of violence by a small handful full of the many thousands of protesters who visited St. Paul, most of those incidents isolated to Monday’s protests (among these incidents: store windows were smashed, a delegate bus was hit with a brick, and at least one counter-protester was aggressively handled). But in each of the separate incidents I witnessed where Triple Chasers, pepper spray, or impact rounds were used, there were no evident acts of violence on the part of protesters.

Do you have anything to add to these questions? Law enforcement officers out there, is there anything you’d like to add or comment on? We’ll be pursuing these questions as reporters do, through interviews with law enforcement and other officials and by digging through documents and footage — but thousands of you were there behind placards or suited up in riot gear. I’d like to hear from you.

Paul Schmelzer has compiled a remarkable set of Flickr photo essays culled from the pictures taken this week by MnIndy reporters and photographers who were covering the convention in the streets outside Xcel Energy Center.

We hope you’ll take a few moments to go through them. Thanks for your tips, comments and feedback through the week. And thanks especially to the rowdy assemblage that contributed pictures and dispatches for us this week: Andy Birkey, Karl Bremer, Paul Demko, Mike Dvorak, Tom Elko, Sherri Flagg, Jeff Severns Guntzel, Tony Nelson, Steve Perry, Anna Pratt, Molly Priesmeyer, Britt Robson, Tim Roman, Peter S. Scholtes and Chris Steller.

MnIndy RNC in review slideshows:

Faces in the crowd

The thick blue line

Grace notes

Everywhere a sign

Editor’s note: The best way to view this slideshow is to 1) click to start it; 2) hover your cursor over the image until the toolbar appears; 3) use the icon at lower right to click into full screen mode; 4) use the toolbar to advance the slides manually; for some reason, the auto-advance feature has been stopping after half a dozen images or so.

Editor’s note: The best way to view this slideshow is to 1) click to start it; 2) hover your cursor over the image until the toolbar appears; 3) use the icon at lower right to click into full screen mode; 4) use the toolbar to advance the slides manually; for some reason, the auto-advance feature has been stopping after half a dozen images or so.

Editor’s note: The best way to view this slideshow is to 1) click to start it; 2) hover your cursor over the image until the toolbar appears; 3) use the icon at lower right to click into full screen mode; 4) use the toolbar to advance the slides manually; for some reason, the auto-advance feature has been stopping after half a dozen images or so.

Editor’s note: The best way to view this slideshow is to 1) click to start it; 2) hover your cursor over the image until the toolbar appears; 3) use the icon at lower right to click into full screen mode; 4) use the toolbar to advance the slides manually; for some reason, the auto-advance feature has been stopping after half a dozen images or so.

It all went awry on the lawn of the Capitol. A group numbering somewhere around 1,000 was expecting to depart on the last sanctioned protest march of the week at 5:00, but members of the liaison group Minnesota Peace Team told organizers at the last minute that they would not be allowed to march after all. Police with tear gas at the ready began arriving at the scene. And then, with no announcement, a contingent of the protesters abruptly began marching south toward 12th Street, and practically everyone else in the crowd followed.

Police on bicycles and horses scrambled to head them off, first herding them westward on 12th Street. When the crowd reached the John Ireland Avenue bridge, it took a left to cross into downtown and was met by a phalanx of police on horseback blocking the south end of the bridge. These were quickly reinforced by a growing number of police in riot gear standing in a formation about eight rows deep. Before long, a path was cleared to let through a pair of buses trapped on the bridge by the sudden turn of events, and then both sides settled down to a roughly hour-long standoff.

What follows is a chronology of the events on the bridge and afterward.

5:12-5:20 As protesters and cops face off on the John Ireland Bridge, there is a palpable feeling—inaccurate, as it turns out—that this can only end in tear gas, billy clubs and mayhem. But neither side is willing to make the provocative first move to set the violent chain in motion, and the protesters even inject some much-needed comic relief into the proceedings. Their chant of “You’re sexy! You’re cute! Take off that riot suit!” was reported here yesterday. But another great moment came earlier, when the protest leaders were first asking those assembled whether they wanted to sit down and hold their ground or disperse as had been instructed. A coterie of skater-punk types who looked to be kindred spirits to Black Flag or Rage Against the Machine instead started chanting, complete with funky hip-sway, “Sit down sit down!” to the “Get down get down” part of Kool & the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie.”

5:20 I’m mapping out my don’t-get-maced strategy for when the cops wade forward. Avoid proximity to protesters, and especially media, like Channel 5, who have donned gas masks. Head instead for the most imperially dressed media celebs. I stake out KARE 11’s Rick Kupchella, clad for a J Crew catalog in a sweater, the latest chic sunglasses, and designer jeans.

5:40 There’s an obvious discrepancy about the official timeframe of the protest. According to the people in the Mn Peace Team shirts, the cops believe the rally and march were sanctioned to start at 3 p.m. and be over by 5—that’s one reason they scattered those gathered on the capitol lawn just before 5. But during the standoff on the bridge, Cherrene Horazuk, a volunteer for the Antiwar Committee who has been leading the megaphone chants right at the front line, tells me, “We have always said we rally at 4 and march at 5. We talked to the cops about this when we were getting ready and the lead cop, [Sgt. John] Lazoya, said okay, then later denied he said that. They knew our plans all along. They knew our intentions.”

6:20-6:23 After a parallel scramble to the east, we’re all back at the bridge fronting the intersection of 12^th and Cedar. The crowd is getting antsy to march, the chanting more fervent, the drumbeats louder. The protesters link arms and on command of the megaphone all take one step forward toward the line of cops on horses, now easily within arm’s length. I’m suddenly struck by the incredible cool and calm of the horses in the face of this noise and proximity. The protesters take another step, now almost nose to nose. The cops respond by signaling that they are going to move the horses forward. On signal, they do, one step, and the protesters move back to avoid being stepped on by these enormous animals. The cat-and-mouse game has become a fight for inches, and the Xcel is still more than a quarter-mile away.

6:24-6:30 Right in front of me, a slightly built male protester is suddenly shoved backward three or four steps with a horizontal thrust of the billy club by a riot-geared cop with the helmet #1292. “Get back!” he hollers angrily. It’s the kind of spark that can often set off the whole show and after a split second of surprise, the protester, who looks to be a teenager, says “What the fuck?!” and advances one step forward with the sort of faux menace that comes from someone who really doesn’t want to engage. Meanwhile, the two females on either side of him are telling him to calm down, not let the cops get to him, and the cop who shoved him has quelled his anger and gone back into stoic mode.

But not the cop with helmet #0577, who abruptly surges up from his position on the second line, raising his tear gas gun squarely at the head of the male protester, and screaming, “Shut the FUCK up and get back!” The cop is nearly quivering with rage and he’s got a weapon aimed. Everybody holds their breath, and then the cop abruptly steps back as the male and his two friends move away. For the next five minutes, the angry cop paces in the second line, glaring out at the crowd. Then he huddles with two other cops, and points out into the crowd, presumably pointing out the kid he had just chased away. There were a lot of good cops who wanted a peaceable assembly at yesterday’s protest. The asshole in helmet #0577 wasn’t one of them.

6:36 The cops order the crowd to disperse, saying they will be arrested. A couple dozen protesters, who sat down on 12^th street a few minutes earlier, don’t budge. A small, initial volley of tear gas is fired, hastening the dispersal and creating a cacophony of coughing, as the horse-mounted police take up positions on all four sides of the intersection, isolating the seated protesters in the middle, who are being arrested. Chants of “Let them go! Let them go!” are suddenly redirected outside this enclosed box of cops, as two young males are hauled into the crowd by the lawn near the bridge and unceremoniously dumped. It turns out they are Jeff Shaw and Andy Mannix from City Pages, who had stayed with the seated protesters inside.

7:23 The standoff has lengthened into lethargy, and slowly but very surely, the ranks of the protesters are thinning. Someone comes on the megaphone and exhorts, “Don’t anybody leave! Show your support for our brothers and sisters who were arrested!” It is the first time, in nearly two and half hours since the march began, that the voice on the megaphone hasn’t been female.

7:33 Another brief dust-up, as the cops suddenly move into the crowd and arrest one of the protesters, perhaps on suspicion of some previous action. Nobody knows. The chant of “Let him go!” begins anew. A few minutes later, about half the remaining crowd, maybe 200-300 people, start moving away from the block.

7:56 Lots of action erupts simultaneously. A phalanx of police cars race down the streets in front of the Capitol; ditto groups of cops on horses and bikes. Rounds of tear gas and percussion grenades thunder from the directions of both I-94 and University Avenue. The parking lot by Sears is full of police officers, and plumes of tear gas and smoke from the grenades rises over University Avenue. By the time I arrive, protesters are scattering, variously pissed, crying, jogging, limping, wiping their eyes. They talk about the cops firing tear gas to disperse the crowd, and then the percussion grenades, right into the crowd. “One landed right beside me,” says Martin Goff. “The kids weren’t being aggressive at all. One picked up a piece of concrete but put it down when I told him to.”

8:20 A medic and some members of the Mn Peace Team surround a young protester writhing and screaming on the ground, clawing at his eyes. “We need someone to come and take this young man to a hospital,” says a Peace Team member into a phone. The protester is Misael Ivan Lopez, age 20, who grew up in East St. Paul and now lives in Uptown Minneapolis. In between gasps for air and rolling around waiting for his eyes to clear, he related what happened.

“I went to the wrong circle up there,” he said, motioning toward University Avenue, “and I got closed in. They weren’t trying to close me in, but it was just like how everything was happening. Everyone was riding around and I ended up being by myself with another guy on a bike in a fucking square full of guys who were like—they tackled me as I was trying to put myself on the ground. I was already face down when a guy threw my camera and pulled my stuff off me and turned my head [toward him] and sprayed me. They grabbed my face and sprayed me after I had already dropped down and fetal-ed.” A medic put another dose of water into his eyes. “I saw him coming so I hit the ground because I didn’t want to get hit—I fetal-ed,” he repeated. “They stretched me out and turned me so I was on my back and another guy pulled my goggles off and he sprayed me. My goggles were already tilted a little bit”—he pointed to a space between his eye and his left ear—“and the guy ripped them off the rest of the way and sprayed me. Aaargh!” he yelled, in pain and frustration, and flipped back on his side. Fetal-ed.

Here’s a slideshow of pictures taken before and during the events described here by MnIndy’s Steve Perry, who was there too. Martin Goff, who’s quoted above, is the last photo in the set. The chicken, incidentally, was not busted in conjunction with the march. The chicken was busted by a History Theatre security guard for hawking CDs to people waiting in line for the Daily Show taping.