There had been problems, widely reported, during the Peace March, apparently from masked anarchists, detailed in another diary, here.
But after the march, there were more arrests that occurred with no apparent justification. Here's the video recap, taken from the boat of Bruce Moffat and Kristina Ogland, on the Mississippi in downtown Saint Paul:
Here's a verbal recap with still pix:
After the march, things were also very bad. The police closed off the main bridge the marchers needed to return to their cars and forced them to walk along the north side of the river.
The marchers, mostly college-age people, evidently move quickly enough for them. The police followed them and ultimately threw concussion grenades and smoke bombs to hurry them along, firing right into the tail end of the moving crowd.
Then the police lined up at the other end so that there was no place for people to go.
They closed the box canyon and arrested everyone. I didn't have a full view of the area (another grassy knoll), as I am on Bruce Moffat & KrisTina Ogland's boat, the KrisTina, in the middle of the river.
Police aimed concussion grenades and smoke bombs at the dispersed crowd, boxed them in and then arrested them. I wasn't close enough to see if any of the marchers were hurt. The police outnumbered the marchers by 2 or 3 to one.
At the end, our one pleasure boat was surrounded by 10 or 12 police/Coast Board boats.
We were forced away from the scene by the police boats coming dangerously close to ours. Their apparent motive was to stop us from videotaping the arrests. They claimed it was a 'safety issue,' but the only lack of safety came from the cowboy local sheriff's department boats. The Coast Guard were tools of the locals and did their dirty work. At least they are professional.
Eventually they boarded our boat, the KrisTina. Here are a couple of pictures:
They came very close to impounding the boat, but we had 2 lawyers on board, including civil rights attorney Ken Tilsen, who insisted on officers honoring our rights. The Coast Guard ultimately did force us back to our dock, but by then the arrests were just about over.