Want your stuff back after RNC? Most who were arrested get theirs, others go away empty-handed.
More than 800 people arrested during Republican National Convention protests had their first opportunity on Monday to get their belongings — keys, wallets and cell phones — back from police, but some were stymied.
“This is the epitome of insult to injury,” said Kris Hermes, a National Lawyers Guild legal observer at the St. Paul police impound lot, where people were sent to get their property. “There were a large number of people today who returned to homes across the country empty-handed.” Hermes said most people were getting their property back, including those arrested on the first day of the Sept. 1-4 convention after having to wait a week.
But there were snafus.
Some were told police couldn’t find their property, and some were missing things, including a man who said his prescription sunglasses were no longer in his bag, Hermes said. Others didn’t have the identification needed to show police to get their property, because their IDs were with their impounded property, Hermes said. Some were told police would call them about their property, though their cell phones also were in police custody.
St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said the “vast majority” of people were getting their property back Monday. He said he thought there were “very few” cases of property not being found. Normally, after a St. Paul officer arrests a person, he or she goes to the property room at police headquarters to retrieve belongings. But because of the number of RNC-related arrests, police designated the impound lot as an overflow site. Three men jailed last week filed a petition Thursday in Ramsey County District Court, saying their personal effects weren’t returned when they were released. A judge dismissed the petition Friday, saying the attorney should have used a different legal action to recover the property. Walsh said Monday was the first day people could get property back, because a security perimeter had been set up around police headquarters and some of the property was there.
On Monday, many who went to the Grove Street headquarters were directed to the impound lot, off Concord Street on St. Paul’s West Side. Nathan Barten, who said he was cited Thursday for presence at an unlawful assembly, couldn’t drive because police had his car keys. When he found his property wasn’t at headquarters, he biked over to the impound lot. It’s about three miles by car, but Barten said he couldn’t take a direct route because bikes aren’t allowed on U.S. 52 At the impound lot, Barten said he was told he had to go back to headquarters to get his tracking number, needed to find his property. The number was supposed to be on a wristband given when he was arrested. He brought the band with him Monday, but the number wasn’t there. “I’m pretty frustrated,” said Barten, of Delano. “I didn’t resist at all when I was arrested, I gave my full name, and now I don’t have a (tracking) number they never gave me.”
Nicole Armbruster, of Washington, D.C., got her property Monday but was trying to pick up belongings of two friends who had returned to work in Boston. Armbruster, who said she was cited for presence at an unlawful assembly, said they were told she could present photocopies of her friends’ driver’s licenses, along with signed notes saying she had permission to get their property. But on Monday, Armbruster said, police told her the notes needed to be notarized. She was trying to get her friends to fax the notarized copies to police. Because some people didn’t give their names to police, sorting out their property was a problem. One woman who used the alias Jessie Sparkles, as did others, was trying to get her belongings. The woman, who didn’t give her name to a reporter but said she was from Indiana, said she was told police had “thrown the stuff together” with that of others who hadn’t given their names and that it could be two weeks before she got her property back. The woman said some people booked as John or Jane Doe had gotten their property back.
Walsh said if John or Jane Does identify themselves and their property, they’ll get it back. He said he was unsure of the timeline. “People did what they could to obfuscate and confuse the issue,” he said.”They’re trying to be held unaccountable for their actions and get their property back.”
Michelle Gross, Communities United Against Police Brutality president, said she gave police her real name when cited for presence at an unlawful assembly Thursday night. But Gross, who lives in Minneapolis, said police had her property logged as belonging to Sara Faith Gross (she doesn’t know where Sara came from; Faith is her middle name) and it took about 90 minutes to get her purse back Monday.
Matt Connell, of Minneapolis, said he had to go without his medication for a few days after his arrest Sept. 1. Connell said he was held for about six hours and released with a citation for presence at an unlawful assembly. He didn’t have keys to get into his apartment or for a lockbox that holds prescription medication he takes daily. Connell said he had to break into the lockbox, at his girlfriend’s home, to get the medicine. At the impound lot Monday, Connell said, police told him they couldn’t find his property, but that it might be in the property room at headquarters. He checked; it wasn’t there, and he went back to the impound lot, where Connell said he was eventually told his property was at the Bloomington police department, though he was arrested in St. Paul. He was heading to Bloomington late Monday afternoon. “I was so angry all week,” Connell said earlier. “Now, I’m just tired.”
Awwwww, poor babies. Does this mean they have to fill up new jugs of urine?
L! O! L!
If they don’t have an ID showing the name they gave when arrested, they shouldn’t get anything.
The cops took my meds away! That makes me so DAMNED MAD that I just want to…cry; cry and write in my journal and stare out the window all day until I just want to SMASH THE WINDOW and TAKE THE SHARDS OF GLASS and carefully arrange them in neat rows representing the tattered course of my life so far in glinting, ironic perfection until I SWEEP THE WHOLE WRETCHED MESS ONTO THE FLOOR AND STOMP UNTIL THE NEIGHBORS KID STARTS CRYING and I recall the universal futility of existence and…oh, wait, here’s a spare bottle in my shaving kit. Damn, I’m late for work, gotta go.
Hey, what was that Baretta used to say?
DON’T DO THE CRIME IF YOU CAN’T DO THE TIME!
Sucks to be them.
Yeah, I think the dude was off his meds before, during, and after the convention.
Speaking of, we learn yesterday that Keith Obermann and Chris “tingly leg” Matthews aren’t allowed to cover election night, then today that Kim Jong Il may have had a stroke. Coincidence?
What is wrong with these people that their lives are so devoid of meaning that they plan a trip and activities with the desired end result being arrest? Seriously, watch TV, rent a movie, go to the park, ride your bike! There has to be something better to do with your time and money.
I just feel awful for those poor dears! It’s truly a grave injustice when you can’t act like a skinhead at a soccer riot without getting oppressed by those jack-booted agents of the military-industrial complex anymore.
And getting your stuff confiscated in jail! I bet they don’t do that to Repuglicans when they get arrested! How dare they delay in returning the property to those people- all those car/house keys & cell phones; why, if they’d had jobs, they could’ve been fired for not calling in!
This is a miscarriage of justice. It’s a sad, sad day when you can’t violently harass conservatives and Christians or try to suppress their rights to free speech… what’s next, a ban on sex with pre-teens!? SHEESH!!!
Judging from the photo, a number of them now have medical bills for facial and breast contusions. And there are probably several concussions. I wonder if Bill Ayers will be picking up those tabs?
I really feel bad for the police. First, they have to touch those stinking hippies when they arrest them, now the property room stinks from storing all the crap these stinking hippies carried around in their stinking pockets.
If they hadn’t gotten to beat on them, I would say they deserved compensation. But they got to punch hippies, so they’re all square.
can you say “Magical Mystery Tour” bunkie? sure you can…
oh yeah, “me not troll”
These are the consequences to your actions, my dears. I realize that YOUR party doesn’t believe in them but in the REAL world they exist and everyone, including you, needs to deal with them.
Sort of like, if you have sex, you get a baby or an STD or AIDS. Action=Consequence. See, and you thought you wouldn’t learn anything today.
It is really hard to evaluate any news about activists. Their standard tactic is to allege brutality and mistreatment in every circumstance.
When the police do things right the activists lie and say they were mistreated. And when they are mistreated they lie and say they were mistreated even more.
The media accepts every word.
I’ll bet that not one of them considered or were informed that from now on whenever they fill out a job application they have to indicate “Yes” to the question of “Have you been convicted of a crime…”
Poor, poor babies.
Frankly, I’m a little disappointed in the police. I really would have expected these people to find that their cell phones had been smashed, their sunglasses shattered, and their meds completely lost “in the confusion” surrounding the confrontation and arrests.
I’m sorry for the short, unfunny rant, but these people TICK ME OFF!! How DARE they compare themselves to Martin Luther King or Ghandi? They’re whining because they didn’t get their stuff back? You ARE bananas. King and Ghandi both underwent terrific physical pain to themselves and their loved ones. They were threatened and scared for their lives and if they had done one tenth of what these freaks had done, they would have been shot! Not simply been politely taken to jail by a police officer who bent HIMSELF over to make it easy on them. These creeps aren’t fit to tie King’s shoes! I wish he was alive, he’d have spit on them.
Next time, let’s have the GOP convention in Chicago or L.A.
Missing purses would be the least of their worries.
Stupid a$$w1pes, think they can try to shut down the free political speech of the Republicans, break the law, and they and their baggage should be cared for like they were checking in at the Holiday Inn.
If they’ve jailed the bastards
that attacked the Cub Scout
bus on night one,
or the attempted murderers
who dropped bags of sand
and cement from overpasses
onto buses – I hope they
throw away the key.
These are the same people that want the government to run everything. They advocate making health care exactly like this. “You’re here for your surgery? … (waits 1/2 hour) … Sorry, that’s in Bloomington today. Next.”
If I had been a cop in charge of confiscated property, I wouldn’t be able to resist swapping the medications around. And I’d have to find a way to download the absolute worst images from the web I could find onto their phones…
Well! I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!
Sorry, I couldn’t resist!
The problem with government control of any business is lack of accountability. (FannyMutt & FreddyJeff?)
The Military is generally efficient and successful because talent is rewarded with promotion, and wrongful behavior is punishable by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
Now, if All government employees; elected, nominated, appointed or just plain hired; were also subject to the stringent standard of behaviour and accountability required by the UCMJ, and faced the same swift justice and harsh penalties as provided for in the UCMJ, Then yeah, it might work.
But without that Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, the less control government has over our lives, the better!