alicek's Blog

Flexicuffs aren't flexible: that's the first thing I learned about being handcuffed Thursday night on the Marion Street Bridge in St. Paul.

I was one of several dozen media members covering a large protest on the final night of the Republican National Convention. The protesters originally planned to march from the state capitol to the Xcel Center about a mile and a half away. Police blocked one of the bridges over I-94 about ten blocks from the RNC perimeter, keeping the protesters on the capitol (north) side of the freeway.

My colleague John Wise and I found another bridge across and visited the largely peaceful protest. I videotaped officers arresting one agitator to the cheers of the crowd. Just when it seemed this mostly non-violent protest would break up, a second large group came marching south to the bridge. They came from a street that ran closer to the capitol, but I'm not sure where they started.

This second group didn't try to break through the police bridge barrier, but kept marching past it, turning west down the freeway frontage road. Police quickly scrambled ahead and blocked south access to the next bridge across I-94, instead turning the crowd north past a Sears store.

I was a few blocks behind but I saw flashes and heard several loud bangs. When I arrived at the scene, mounted police began corralling protesters into the parking lot of the Sears store. Other officers on bullhorns were telling people to move "southbound" back toward the freeway. Several smoke bombs and flash-bang concussion grenades went off in my immediate area, which I captured on tape. Police finally told everyone to "move toward the bridge."

Once people were on the bridge we were instructed to sit down and put our hands on our heads. I sat on the median between John and a reporter from Variety magazine, and I could see several other media members I'd spotted over the last several hours sitting about 50 feet away. About an hour later an officer on a bullhorn announced everyone on the bridge would be arrested, and to cooperate with officers as they cuffed us one by one. They asked that we keep our hands on our heads until we were cuffed.

At least two officers recognized that we and a few others on the median were credentialed media members, as we all had RNC Radio/TV tags around our necks. They asked about six of us on the median to sit together. We were given the distinct impression more than once that we would be cuffed but then merely ticketed and released on the scene. The other media members I'd spotted before sitting 50 feet away had already been taken away.

Finally I was asked to stand while I was handcuffed. My camera bag and pockets were searched, my information was taken, and I was escorted to another area by a polite and respectful policeman in riot gear. He waited with me for about 45 minutes. John and the Variety reporter were nearby, each with their own police escort.

Finally another officer noticed my credentials and told my escorting officer he'd heard the media was being ticketed and released in a "grassy knoll" area (yes, that's what they called it). Both officers walked me there, asking a few different lawmen if they knew about the orders, which no one seemed to know anything about. They cut the cuffs off me (I had to wriggle out of one of them, and yes they are very IN-flexi-cuffs). They then told me to wait, trusting I wouldn't disappear with a perimeter of officers nearby. I swore I wouldn't move until someone in uniform told me to.

While I waited for someone to give me a ticket, I saw something that made me go cold: John was led to another area and was being photographed for a mugshot. Then they took his media credentials and bagged them, along with his camera and gear, and led him to a bus. I was suddenly very, very nervous. What was happening? Why wasn't he being released with me? I saw the Variety reporter go through the same thing, too. My escorting officer had disappeared. Who else knew about releasing the media? Clearly, no one in my immediate area.

I stood there getting more and more agitated. About half an hour later the Public Information Officer for the Ramsey County Sheriff approached me and asked who I was and why I was standing there by myself. He laughed when I explained I was waiting for a ticket. He then escorted me to the perimeter of the scene and told me I was free to leave. I told him about my colleague on the bus, which had just left, and he explained he couldn't do anything now, but would be on the lookout for him. And then he left.

And I turned around and began walking very fast in the opposite direction.