Anarchy in St. Paul: Why the RNC Commission Report Won't Help Future Planners of National Security
Coleen Rowley
HuffPost
One of the notable aspects of President Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington was that, somehow, without tear gas, tasers or thousands of people dragged off in handcuffs, professional law enforcement was able to provide exceptional public safety in our nation's capital, even when crowds swelled to almost 2 million people. Those peaceful scenes contrasted sharply with what happened in St. Paul a little over four months before.
For the majority of residents for whom the Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul is but a distant bad memory and who don't have the time or inclination to wade through the recently released 97-page RNC Commission Report & Executive Summary, there's little reason to read beyond the first footnote. There, former criminal prosecutors Thomas Heffelfinger and Andrew Luger lay out their response to community members, like me, who asked whether such aggressive "police state" action during the RNC was actually necessary. Their simplistic answer is that it was, but they furnish little by way of proof for that conclusion.
Apparently, all the prosecutors thought they had to do to justify charging their $130,000 fee was look up the term "anarchist" in their Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary to spot a partial reference to violence and note that the word rhymes enough with "terrorist" to stoke fear and hatred sufficient to make us all forget the First Amendment and local officials' promise to effect a "softer" community-based policing.
(Continued here.)
HuffPost
One of the notable aspects of President Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington was that, somehow, without tear gas, tasers or thousands of people dragged off in handcuffs, professional law enforcement was able to provide exceptional public safety in our nation's capital, even when crowds swelled to almost 2 million people. Those peaceful scenes contrasted sharply with what happened in St. Paul a little over four months before.
For the majority of residents for whom the Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul is but a distant bad memory and who don't have the time or inclination to wade through the recently released 97-page RNC Commission Report & Executive Summary, there's little reason to read beyond the first footnote. There, former criminal prosecutors Thomas Heffelfinger and Andrew Luger lay out their response to community members, like me, who asked whether such aggressive "police state" action during the RNC was actually necessary. Their simplistic answer is that it was, but they furnish little by way of proof for that conclusion.
Apparently, all the prosecutors thought they had to do to justify charging their $130,000 fee was look up the term "anarchist" in their Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary to spot a partial reference to violence and note that the word rhymes enough with "terrorist" to stoke fear and hatred sufficient to make us all forget the First Amendment and local officials' promise to effect a "softer" community-based policing.
(Continued here.)
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