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Incredible Footage of Mass Arrest During Republican Convention

by Rob Walker | September 19, 2008 at 11:59 am

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This video is just incredible. The person who took it buried the tape (it is unclear whether it was a tape or a kind of memory card) because he feared it would be confiscated.

Why would he think that? Oh, just the hundreds of people who surrounded over 200 random people in a park and arrested them. For nothing.

Now that we've had a few weeks to settle, a look back at Labor Day in the Twin Cities. Labor Day was of course also Day One of the Republican National Convention. Video was released today of an apparent mass arrest of utterly peaceful concert goers at the SEIU Labor Day concert.
My personal favorite moment in the tape is an off-camera exchange. Police in riot gear have surrounded loungers in a waterfront park. They announce, "Ladies and Gentlemen, You're Under Arrest" and you hear one young woman say incredulously "Are you serious?"

Yep, I'm afraid they are.

A press release from the group that released the video:

BURIED TAPE REVEALS USE OF FORCE AND AN UNWARRANTED MASS ARREST OF BYSTANDERS DURING THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (September 18, 2008) 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.

More than eight hundred people were arrested in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention. This video shows that at least twenty percent of the eight hundred plus arrested were seized without due cause.

While we knew that protesters and even some journalists were being arrested, most of those arrested on camera were just families, people attending a concert across the river or people hanging out at the park.

Previous NowPublic coverage of the other arrests:

UPDATE | 09:30pm EST - Reports are now surfacing that journalist Amy Goodman, of DemocracyNow, is one of several journalists that was arrested at the RNC on Monday.

"This is Mikasi here on the John Ireland over I-94 in Saint Paul, Minnesota between Kellogg and Rice St. Right now, at the junction here, there's a stand off between approximately, I'd say 150 police and right here on bicycles with horses and approximately, I can not say approximately, over 1,000 protesters