St. Paul Police

I was killing time on a back bench of an 8th floor Ramsey County courtroom Wednesday, waiting with about 50 others for something to happen (all the action in the RNC8 case that day took place behind closed doors, as it turned out), when a person with a familiar face took a seat in the next row. Could it be Coleen Rowley, famed FBI whistleblower, TIME magazine 2002 person of the year and the DFL Party’s 2006 candidate in Minnesota’s Second Congressional District? Indeed it was.

Though thousands marched through the streets of St. Paul today without incident, it was difficult to ignore a roving group of protesters who were sometimes marching and sometimes dashing their way through a parade route they reinvented by the minute. Minnesota Independent’s Jeff Severns Guntzel followed them to the day’s chemical-soaked climax.

When Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin took the stage at the Veterans for Peace rally in front of the State Capitol building today, where hundreds of activists gathered before marching towards the Xcel Energy Center, she started with the string of weekend raids on her mind: “This is not the Midwestern welcome we expected!”

In a video report from Submedia.tv, individuals caught in Friday night’s raid on the RNC Welcoming Committee’s “convergence site,” describe how they went from watching a movie to lying face down, handcuffed, with guns pointed at them.

On Thursday, the St. Paul Dog Training Unit celebrated the graduation of a class of 12 new K-9 cops. The German shepherds traveled from abroad to undergo the specialized training and are now bound for law enforcement careers with various police departments across the state (some will venture into Wisconsin, as well). Completing the rigorous [...]