An additional 20 cases stemming from the mass arrest on the final day of the gathering are still being investigated.

“There was a lot of confusion for a lot of people that night,” said City Attorney John Choi in announcing the decision.

“Ultimately this decision reflects specifically our prosecution standard: Can we prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt at trial? We’ve come to the conclusion that, for the cases involved the Marion Street bridge and the Cedar Street bridge, that would not be the case.”

However, Choi defended the St. Paul Police Department’s decision to arrest nearly 400 people on Sept. 4.

“There was probable cause to arrest, but there wasn’t probable cause to prosecute,” he said. “Those standards are very very different. It is our obligation not to proceed on cases where we believe that we would not succeed at trial.”

Local civil rights activists said the failure to press charges is just the latest evidence that many of the arrests during the RNC were frivolous.

“The reality is that those arrests should never have been made,” said Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

“Much of the alleged disorder is directly attributable to the police presence and police overreaction.”

“They should never have arrested them in the first place,” added Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “I believe that they were arbitrary and capricious arrests.”

The city attorney’s office has now processed roughly 90 percent of the 672 potential misdemeanor cases stemming from RNC activities. Of those cases, 52 have resulted in guilty pleas or fines. An equal number of cases are currently pending in the court system. However, the overwhelming majority of arrests — 490 — have either not resulted in charges or the cases have been dismissed by the courts.

So far no civil litigation has been brought against the city for police actions during the four-day gathering. Anti-war protester Mick Kelly has sent the city a letter stating his intent to sue for alleged civil rights violations, but has yet to file a case.

The city has a $10 million insurance policy, paid for by the Minneapolis St. Paul 2008 Host Committee, to cover litigation costs. However, numerous lawsuits are expected in the coming months.

“We’ve got a bunch of cases we’re looking at,” said Samuelson.

“Attorneys have been engaged in active information gathering in consideration of civil litigation related to the pattern of mass arrests and excessive use of police force,” Nestor confirmed. “I would think that planning can now go forward.”

Early in the day protesters were joking with the riot police.

This group of anarchists, many of them wearing masks, refused to speak with reporters. Occasionally they would pause in the parade route, allow the marchers ahead to separate themselves and then sprint forward as a group down the road.

As the afternoon dragged on tensions increased. Shortly after 2:30 a phalanx of cops on bikes and motorcycles followed a group of roughly two dozen protesters down Sibley Street.

One person was taken to the ground by a trio of cops and arrested.

The encounter came to a standstill at the intersection of Sibley and 4th streets. Protesters locked arms and refused to budge. The cops kept silent guard while the protesters sang “We Shall Overcome.”

Another individual was arrested at Sibley and John Ireland Boulevard. “Don’t talk to the pigs,” yelled one person at the scene.

This parking garage, at the corner of Wall and Sixth streets, is being used as a temporary holding facility to process protesters who are arrested.

The St. Paul Police Department issued a detailed permit today laying out the parade route that protesters will be allowed to utilize on the opening day of the Republican National Convention. Marchers will be permitted to walk from the Capitol down Cedar St., proceed across 7th St. toward the Xcel Energy Center, and then circle back on a triangle of streets adjacent to the convention location.

“We believe we have struck that difficult balance that we’ve been looking for between free expression and safety and security,” assistant chief Matt Bostrom, who is overseeing RNC security, told reporters at a press conference this afternoon. “I believe it’s unprecedented access to the event.”

According to Bostrom, protesters will not be segregated from the Xcel center by barbed wire, as was the case at the Democratic convention in Boston four years ago. “If there is something there it would be a material that you can see through and you can hear through,” he said. “And we’re not going to mess with that.”

The assistant chief also insisted that parade security will be no different from other large gatherings in St. Paul. “Unless we get some confirmation that there are people in that route who have ill intentions, we’re going to staff this the way we normally staff parades,” he said.

The city issued a preliminary parade permit to the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War in March, but the authorization lacked specific details on when and where protesters would be allowed to gather. The coalition filed a lawsuit against St. Paul in U.S. District Court, arguing that the vague parade terms violated the group’s constitutional rights. A hearing on the suit is slated for Friday.

It’s unclear what impact the newly issued permit will have on the litigation. “I don’t know,” Bostrom said when asked about the lawsuit. “As you probably understand, I can’t comment on that.”

Lawyers for the protest group raised a couple of remaining issues with the new permit. Bruce Nestor said his clients have concerns that the parade route will not physically accommodate all of the protesters and that they will be required to pass by the Xcel Energy Center no later than 2 p.m.

“They believe that will segregate the marchers from the majority of the delegates, the main activities of the day, as well as really segregate the marchers from the main media coverage in the evening,” he said. “The city is willing to grant freedom of speech to the Republican convention to disrupt traffic and put a considerable burden on the police. I think our clients believe that this is a grudging concession to the right of citizens to let their objections be heard.”

But according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in March, the First Amendment rights of protesters are being unconstitutionally proscribed by St. Paul’s parade permit policies. Next week, U.S. District Court Judge Joan Ericksen is slated to hear arguments in the case filed by The Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War. The suit charges that the group’s free speech rights are being violated by the city’s refusal to issue a parade permit laying out exactly when and where the protesters will be allowed to march on the first day of the convention.

The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction ordering the city to issue a permit immediately, along with a ruling that St. Paul’s current policy is unconstitutional and therefore invalid. The city is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed and denies that its guidelines run afoul of the Constitution.

St. Paul issued a “conditional alternative permit” to the group in March, but it lacks explicit guidance on when and where the protesters will be allowed to assemble. Assistant Police Chief Matt Bostrom, who is overseeing security for the convention, has promised to supply a detailed permit by the end of this month that will allow protesters to gather within “sight and sound” of the Xcel center.

But organizers are skeptical of that commitment. “We’ve heard a lot from the city about what they plan on doing,” says Teresa Nelson, an attorney with the Minnesota Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union who is working on the case. “Time really is of the essence.”

St. Paul Police Department spokesman Tom Walsh says city policy is not to comment on pending litigation. “It’s a legal action against the city,” he notes. “We can’t say anything.”

This is so far the only lawsuit pending relating to RNC protest activities. But the ACLU and other concerned parties are closely monitoring the actions of surrounding municipalities. Earlier this week, the city of Bloomington postponed voting on a beefed-up protest ordinance after the civil liberties group wrote a letter questioning the constitutionality of the proposal. On Wednesday, the Minneapolis City Council debated an essentially voluntary protest permit policy, whereby groups would be encouraged to notify the city about large demonstrations, but wouldn’t be subject to any penalties if they fail to adhere.Four years ago in Boston, protesters at the Democratic National Convention were assured that they would be permitted to assemble within earshot of the FleetCenter. But organizers discovered just a week before the convention was slated to begin that the “demonstration zone” was to be a fenced-in area surrounded by razorwire that more closely resembled a prison courtyard. A federal judge, John Woodcock, described it as a “grim, mean, and oppressive space,” as well as an “offense to the spirit of the First Amendment.” But he declined to legally mandate changes to the arrangement because there wasn’t sufficient time to come up with a safe, viable alternative.

Lawyers for the St. Paul protest organizers fear that they will get caught in a similar legal limbo. “When the city says we’re using the Boston model, to me that’s delay, delay, delay until it’s too late for a court to vindicate First Amendment rights,” Nelson says.

The SPPD’s Walsh believes the Boston analogy is wrongheaded. “We have assured them that no later than May 31st there will be a parade route,” he says. “I just don’t think there are parallels.”

The litigation has brought forth some interesting nuggets of information about planning for the convention. In an affidavit, Bostrom states that the Police Department will supplement its force of approximately 600 officers with an additional 2,500 cops from various law enforcement agencies during the four-day gathering.

The city attorney’s office also submitted a legal exhibit featuring protest plans drafted by the activist group Students for a Democratic Society. Dated March 28, the document lays out designs to blockade the Xcel center, immobilize buses, obstruct area bridges–and ultimately shut down the RNC. “I’m not exactly sure what their motives are in providing that information,” says Nelson. “That kind of caught my eye.”

Nelson insists her clients plan to protest Republican policies and the war in Iraq through legal and nonviolent actions. “We’ve always been kind of frustrated that the City has not been more forthright and willing to work with this group that clearly does not want to engage in illegal activity,” she says.