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Omooex: sounds like they hauled your ass off to Santa Rita, eh? I was held there myself, though not exactly on charges. And this was a long time ago. The notion of detention camps in this country is by no means new.
The Warrant: I've only seen the one pdf of The Warrant, but from the accounts from the field and the commentary surrounding the raids, it seems there really was only the one generic/blanket warrant that was simply modified to refer to different (and sometimes wrong) addresses. Also, there were reports that even though the Authorities were at the wrong address for one raid, they were able to get a warrant for the right address within minutes or hours, which indicates there was a judge on duty to sign off, holiday weekend or no. A judge could have ordered the release of detainees, and/or cessation of the raids as well. But apparently that was not a priority for the Court.
The Information: The initial raid on the Convergence Center on Friday night was thought to have been precipitated by "information" offered by an infiltrator. All the rest of the raids could have originated from the same source. There's probably nothing illegal about the infiltration itself, though the information was likely bogus (there is no indication that the targets of the raids were planning to commit acts of violence, nor that they were capable of doing so, despite the ravings and chest thumpings of the Ramsey County Sheriff.) Use by the authorities of bogus information provided by informants is too commonplace to find unusual, shocking, or even particularly outrageous. It's SOP, all over this sweet land of ours. And I doubt there are many who really want it stopped. But there must be consequences when the Authorities use such information without discretion, which seems to be what happened here. The Authorities (which appear to include Hennepin and Ramsey County deputies, Saint Paul and Minneapolis Police, and the FBI -- probably others as well) decided to act preemptively on essentially bogus information to accomplish political ends (suppression of dissent during the Republican Convention) damn the consequences.
The Upshot: We can expect those who were arrested to be released and charges dropped. SOP. We can expect civil suits by the detainees and arrestees, which suits will drag out for a long time and likely will be settled in favor of the plaintiffs for some hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars (millions being less likely because no one was injured or killed in the raids.) Insurance will cover any such judgement. The incidents will be forgotten. The Authorities will have accomplished their mission, and nothing at all will interfere with carrying out whatever new mission of suppression they decide on in the future.
As I said earlier, the point of these raids was to conduct them and to let the actions intimidate anyone who would dare to protest the Republican convention in St. Paul. Too soon to guage the effectiveness of the raids. But their point was made.
If it's really important to prevent the suppression of dissent and protest, then more has to be done than publicizing what happened and suing the Authorities in civil court. Publicizing actually serves the intimidation purpose in the short term, and civil suits are of no consequence to law enforcement in most cases.
Law enforcement at the local level has to be directed by civic bodies to stop doing these actions and sanctions must be imposed should they defy direction. They must be kept on a very short leash, by the public and by the local electeds, and if necessary, they must be made accountable to court supervision. In this case, it appears that the FBI was involved and may have precipitated the entire episode (hmmm... Minneapolis/St. Paul, hmmm... Colleen Rowley... hmmm.... why is that red light spinning in my head, hmmm....) which helps to demonstrate the corruption and politization of the Federal authorities, something that will not be easily or soon corrected. But local action from the grassroots up can have a profound effect on how local authorities behave in the future.
The question is, do the people of Minneapolis and St. Paul care enough to take a firm stand against law enforcement overreaching?
